Masters woe won’t define McIlroy

WHEN Rory McIlroy inadvertently hit his dad, Gerry, with a wayward approach shot to the seventh green at Augusta on Thursday, it marked another staging post in what has started to feel like a doomed quest to win the Masters and complete a career Grand Slam. McIlroy is a sublime player. Maybe I am biased but I still feel he is the most naturally talented player on the circuit. He will win more Majors before his career is over. But maybe he has developed a psychological block about the Masters. This year, he missed the cut, his 13th time of trying and failing to win the tournament. There is a macabre fascination about quests like this, great sportsmen and women chasing something that stays just out of their reach. The first I became aware of it when I was a kid was Ken Rosewall’s fading attempts to win the men’s singles title at Wimbledon, culminating with a fourth defeat in the final in 1974, to Jimmy Connors, who wiped him off the court.

Richard Johnson, who retired last week, tried 21 times to win the Grand National without success. Brian Clough never won the FA Cup. Jimmy White could never quite get over the final hurdle to win the World Snooker Championship, Henry Cooper never won the world heavyweight title and Stirling Moss never won the Formula One driver’s title.

Those failures, though, did not define their careers and if McIlroy never nails the Masters, it will not define his, either. It will be a regret, perhaps, but it will throw everything he has achieved into sharper relief.