McIlroy magic fails to materialize
Playing in final pairing, he never produces rally needed to press Reed.
AUGUSTA, GA. — If Rory McIlroy had been asking for divine provenance on Sunday, he received a bunch of the stuff immediately, when he somehow parred the first hole from a wooded preserve far removed from the right fairway.
That bit of conjuring wound up shaving a stoke off strutting Patrick Reed’s lead and their Masters sword fight was on.
Except it wasn’t. McIlroy’s account with the great beyond had already been closed.
“I just didn’t have it today,” he said.
With the leaderboard flashing like a parimutuel odds board, McIlroy could find no traction, shooting a 2-over 74, when he would need seven fewer swings to overtake Reed, who did give him his chances. It was his putter that failed him, particularly around the front nine, when he went from one off the lead to four back. Put a bookmark on the career Grand Slam deal until next April. He was an accessory by late afternoon, ending in a tie for fifth.
“Look, of course it’s (frustrating),” McIlroy said. “But it’s hard to take any positives from it right now. At least I put myself in the position. That’s all I wanted to do. The last four years, I’ve had all top 10s but I haven’t been close enough to the lead. Today, I got myself here. I didn’t quite do enough.”
His first half-hour was sublime. Parring No. 1 from the forest, he birdied the par-5 second hole to pull within a shot of Reed. His advisory from Saturday evening — “All the pressure’s on (Reed) tomorrow . ... I’m hoping to come in an spoil the party” — seemed to ring true. Players with four major championships know things about days like this that lesser players can’t comprehend.
But from one shot back, McIlroy bogeyed four of the next nine holes. After his birdies on Nos. 2 and 4, he went dry, playing nine holes before his next sub-par hole, a two-putt birdie on No. 13. By that time, he had fallen to fifth, four shots off the pace.
“Any time I felt like I hit a good shot, I either left myself on the wrong side of the pin or gave myself a tricky one behind a hill,” he said. “And then when I got some opportunities, I didn’t take advantage of them. Yeah, tough day. But I’ll be back.”
Ranked ninth on the PGA Tour in overall putting average, McIlroy could not make the ones that counted most. Despite his birdie on No. 2, he missed the makeable eagle try from 7 feet on the putt before. On No. 5, he missed a par putt from 5 feet. He lipped out a 2-footer that would have saved par on the par-5 eighth, which he eagled from the fringe the day before. On No. 9, he had a flat 9-footer for birdie that was well off the cup.
That made for four shots before the turn, a failure he compounded on No. 11, where he missed from 5 feet on an up-anddown attempt for another bogey. Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler and Jon Rahm had all passed him by.
“I feel like momentum is a huge thing, especially in the final rounds,” McIlroy said. “You look at what Jordan and Rickie did. They got on a roll and I didn’t. Patrick and I didn’t at all. We were both around even par and just sort of grinding out there. And it wasn’t what we both had in mind. He just hung in there a little bit better than I did and got the job done.”
At 28 — he turns 29 on May 5 — McIlroy still has a chance to join an exclusive group of players who accomplished the career grand slam while still in their 20s: Gary Player (29), Jack Nicklaus (26) and Tiger Woods (24). But Sundays at Augusta National have become an issue.
While he shot 66 in the last round in 2015 to secure fourth place, his best Masters finish, his best chance to win here infamously fell apart in 2011, when he took a three-shot lead into the final round and shot 80, a day summarized by a tee shot on No. 10 that ended up in the garden at the Butler Cabin.
His 74 on Sunday marked his highest closing score in six years and his highest total in any of his past 18 rounds here.
He wound up tied with Cameron Smith, Bubba Watson and Henrik Stenson. McIlroy was one of just 10 players who failed to break par on a tame afternoon; only Matthew Fitzpatrick (75), Xander Schauffele (75), Kyle Stanley (76) and Chez Reavie (76) played worse.
“I think when you’re playing in the final group of a major, there’s always going to be pressure,” he said. “But after I parred the first, that sort of settled me down. So it wasn’t as if nerves got me. I just didn’t quite have it.”