It could be Rory good time
Fall by No. 1 Johnson might open the door to career grand slam
Adam Hadwin was looking for an Augusta National practice round on Wednesday morning, and he wanted to get one in early. Midday thunderstorms were in the forecast. The Masters par-three tournament, an annual tradition, was expected to be in jeopardy.
So Hadwin, who is from Abbotsford, B.C., and will begin play at his first Masters on Thursday, sidled up to the starter and asked about a pairing. It turned out Rory McIlroy and Sergio Garcia were fixing to play the back nine around 7:30 a.m. They were happy to be joined by a third.
While Hadwin, currently ranked 46th in the world, has earned a modest $5 million (U.S.) in his PGA Tour career — pocket change to his playing partners — the trio had plenty in common. Hadwin got married last week. Garcia, the 37year-old world No. 11, is engaged to tie the knot in a few months. And McIlroy, the 27-year-old world No. 2, has nuptials planned for later this month.
“So we were talking about weddings, and talking about wedding rings,” said Hadwin, 29. “We were walking up 17 and I was just showing them my ring. And they were talking about what (types of rings) they’d gotten. It was really enjoyable. They’re pretty good guys.”
Good guys at the world’s most exclusive golf major. And if Hadwin will be one of the focal points of Canadian interest in the event, McIlroy certainly has a chance to make the Masters a premarital highlight.
Not that McIlroy was being talked about as the favourite this week — not until Wednesday evening. That’s when a statement from the manager of Dustin Johnson, the world’s top-ranked player, explained that Johnson spent Wednesday afternoon recovering from the effects of “a serious fall on a staircase at his Augusta rental home.”
The manager’s statement said Johnson “landed very hard on his lower back” and had begun a regimen of anti-inflammatories and ice in the hope he would be ready for his 2:03 p.m. Thursday tee time.
The news rendered Johnson, previously the 5-to-1 betting favourite, as a six-foot-five question mark. And it elevated McIlroy, in some eyes, as the player most likely to slip on the green jacket. Gary Player, the three-time Masters champion, said this week that a win for McIlroy would be a “shot in the arm for the world of golf.”
A title here would make him just the sixth man to win the career Grand Slam. Only Player, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Ben Hogan, and Gene Sarazen have won all four majors. McIlroy’s best finish here is fourth, in 2015.
Given that Johnson had been attracting so much attention before and after his injury — and given the publicity afforded Jordan Spieth’s attempt at bouncing back from his 2016 debacle — McIlroy said the buildup to this year’s tournament has been quieter than he might have previously expected.
“I don’t feel like I can fly under the radar anymore,” he said this week. “But at the same time, it’s sort of felt that way to me and it’s been nice to be able to prepare and just go about my business and try to get ready for this tournament.”
Spieth hasn’t had the same luxury. He’s been answering questions about his impending return to the infamous par-three 12th hole where a quadruple bogey in the final round gutted his chances at becoming a back-to-back Masters champion a year ago. In a practice round on Tuesday Spieth stepped to the tee at No. 12, hit a shot to within a foot, and slyly announced to the crowd: “I could have used that about 12 months ago.”
Spieth’s strategy has been to promptly hop back on the horse, all the while matter-of-factly acknowledging that the golfer’s life is a rough ride.
“It is one of many tournaments I’ve lost given a certain performance on a hole or a stretch of holes,” Spieth said. “It happens in this game.”
McIlroy knows about bouncing back from a high-profile collapse. In 2011, as a 21-year-old still looking for his first major championship, the Northern Irishman began the final round at Augusta with a four-shot lead. But a brutal run of play on the back nine, including a triple-bogey 7 on No. 10 in which he pull-hooked a drive into an area of the property never seen before on the CBS broadcast, saw him shoot an 80 and finish tied for 15th.
“A character-building day, put it that way,” McIlroy said that Sunday. “I’ll come out stronger for it.”
Six years later, McIlroy has won the U.S. Open, British Open and PGA Championship (twice). He’s expecting post-disappointment prosperity from Spieth, too.
“I can assure you: Jordan will be fine,” McIlroy said. “He’ll step up on Thursday on that 12th tee box, and he’ll just be playing the best shot he can possibly play. I’m sure what happened last year won’t enter his mind.”
Hadwin, for his part, said he didn’t spend much time asking McIlroy and Garcia questions about the course on Wednesday morning; he said he wanted to “let them do their thing” and not be a bother. As it turned out, the trio completed their nine holes just in time. The forecasted rain arrived not long after they were off the course. By early afternoon, the par-three tournament was being cancelled midstream because of another approaching storm.
Coupled with Tuesday’s practice round alongside fellow Canadians Mike Weir and Mackenzie Hughes, it was a productive pre-tournament lead-up for Hadwin, whose chances to win the green jacket are listed at one sportsbook at 100 to 1. (At the same online parlour Hughes is a 500-to-1 shot, Weir a 2,000-to-1 bet).
Augusta National will become a different place on Thursday. High winds are expected, which could make for some nervous uncertainty, for first-timers especially. Then again, walking through that narrow parting of the gallery to Augusta’s first tee is nothing a young man who’s mustered the nerve to walk down the matrimonial aisle can’t handle.
McIlroy, soon to experience the latter, knows the feeling of the former.
“I couldn’t sleep the night before (my first Masters),” McIlroy said. “You know, you come up here (to practice) 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. It seems like that bunker on the right gets bigger and it seems like those trees on the left come in a little bit more and seems like the fairway is nonexistent.
“But it’s a great feeling, just the rush, the thrill of playing in your first Masters. Luckily, I’ve been able to come back; they have let me in every year since, so that’s nice. I thoroughly enjoy this week. No matter if you win or lose, it’s one of the highlights of the year.”