Stressful time
Masters still McIlroy’s major obstacle
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Rory McIlroy is having second thoughts, but not about winning the Masters.
McIlroy has always said golf’s most iconic tournament is the event he circles on his calendar each year even though when recently asked what playing in the Masters meant to him he replied, “Stress.” He was laughing when he said it. But he wasn’t joking.
That stress has not only been building all week, it has been building ever since he shot 80 on Sunday at Augusta National six years ago to blow what was an Atlanta Falcons-like super lead. He has been chasing a green jacket ever since but hasn’t quite found the right fit, and so his lonely quest continues to join golf’s smallest fraternity —The Fraternal Order of Grand Slammers.
Along the way back and forth to Augusta, McIlroy picked up wins at the U.S. Open, British Open and twice at the PGA Championship, leaving him with four majors but in the even more stressful position of being one green sports coat short of the career Grand Slam. Only six golfers — Bobby Jones, Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Gary Player — have achieved it, so to be the seventh would make McIlroy golfing royalty.
There is a stress that comes with wanting to win but a greater one born of the effort to keep winning, which for McIlroy has been his fate nearly all his career. He has been a prisoner of others’ expectations and his own rare talent since he was a boy and has grown somewhat accustomed to it. What he has not grown comfortable with is teeing it up at the Masters.
“You know, you come up here as much as you want, but once you step on that first tee and it’s the first hole of the Masters, it’s a little different,” McIlroy said. “It seems like those trees on the left come in a little bit more. It seems like the fairway is nonexistent.”
Despite that feeling of a vice closing in on you, McIlroy insisted again this week that “no matter if you win or lose, it’s one of the highlights of the year. I thoroughly enjoy the week.”
Friends and family who have to put up with his admitted Masters week grumpiness may not enjoy the experience, he admits, but he does. What he didn’t enjoy recently was a different round of golfing pressure, when he chose to play not to win a championship but to have a unique experience.
It’s the kind of thing most anyone would have done just to say you had, but when you choose to play golf with Donald Trump these days, there’s a stress that comes with it far different from what you feel on the first tee at Augusta. It is a stress from without, not within.
“I’ve spent time in President Trump’s company before,” McIlroy said. “That does not mean that I agree with everything that he says. Actually, the opposite. But whenever an invitation or a request comes my way, I don’t want to say I jump at the chance, but at the same time, to see the Secret Service, to see the scene, I mean that’s really what I was going for. There was not one bit of politics discussed in that round of golf. He was more interested talking about the grass that he just put on the greens.
“But look, it’s a difficult one. I felt I would have been making more of a statement if I had turned it down. It’s not a tough place to be put in. It was a round of golf and nothing more. Would I do it again? After the sort of backlash I received, I’d think twice about it.”
What he won’t think twice about is that 80 he shot on Sunday in 2011, when he unraveled on the back nine like an old pair of argyle socks. Stitch by stitch he fell apart, defeat wrapping its cold arms around him as his body sagged for the world to see. It was the classic “learning experience,” unwanted but most necessary if one intends to be more than a momentary headline.
“You need to experience that to learn how to handle it and deal with it,” he said. “As a golfer I think there’s a lot of lessons there that have served me well from there to winning four majors and being able to achieve some of the things that I’ve wanted to achieve. Nothing is given to you. You have to go and work for it. It’s never over. The one thing I did learn: If I’m 4 or 5 (shots) behind going into the back nine this week, for example, you know it’s never over. You can never give up because it takes either a lapse of concentration from someone else or a moment of brilliance from yourself to turn things around. I feel like I’ve taken lessons from that day and they have served me well to this point.”
Beginning at 1:41 p.m. today, those lessons will be serving Rory McIlroy once again as he continues pursuing golf’s rarest feat. If he does it, a year from now he’ll feel the same way he does today when he sticks that first tee in the ground at Augusta National at the 81st Masters. “Stress.” Joyful stress.