BLOOMING AT LAST
Rory McIlroy casts aside his early woes with an eagle on the second to kindle hopes of a charge
THERE is an abundance of floral attractions around Augusta National but the sight of a pair of wallflowers just after lunch yesterday drew an uncommon amount of attention. Rory McIlroy and Bubba Watson were predicted to make the grandest entrance to the moving-day dance, but here they were on the margins of the action over two hours before Jordan Spieth.
McIlroy admitted late on Friday night, after a second round that was part wretched and part rescue mission, that he needed ‘something extraordinary’ to even register with Spieth given the slender Texan’s stupendous lead.
A week ago McIlroy and Watson were favourites to compete for the green jacket but on moving day they were starting half-way down the field, teeing off when the galleries were still filling up and many patrons were using the time to join the sweating, serpentine queue at the merchandise store.
There were some cheers and yells of recognition when the wallflowers finally got noticed at 12.45pm, but this was a pairing impatient to begin. To nourish even the slenderest tendril of hopes they needed big, early statements.
Watson’s aspirations were squashed within 10 minutes, a triple-bogey at the first dooming him. Behind the ropes, the groans were whispered but moved across the baking punters like a breeze.
McIlroy kept them interested and their minds off Spieth, however. For a brief time after he played the second, McIlroy even made people wonder if a charge towards the improbable had begun.
A 37-foot putt for an eagle moved him to four-under; he was still 10 shots off the lead but Spieth’s marvellous form had queered conditions so thoroughly here that a major name closing the gap to that figure kindled hopes.
It was what passed for competition in a running of the Masters that was one man’s show.
And McIlroy was not that individual. His form flattened out after that early flicker, and he was dipping in and out of the top 10 as others stirred around him. Tiger Woods snared three birdies in his four opening holes, Rickie Fowler threatened to put substance inside the riotous wardrobe and former winners Charl Schwartzel and Adam Scott felt around for their old familiarity.
Phil Mickelson was rumbling, too, the veteran knowing not only every contour of the course but also the mental calisthenics required to manage a roar up the leader-board.
McIlroy could do no more than pump out pars for five consecutive holes, and in the circumstances they were valueless.
A birdie on the eighth moved him to five under and a congregation of stellar names congregated in the vast shadow of the lone star illuminating this tournament.
HIS FORM on the par fives, dreadful last year, was one of the authentic improvements in McIlroy’s visit to Augusta this year, with five birdies and two eagles his figure for the week after half of his round yesterday. But that is a modest gain set against the grander project of a career slam, and to propel an aggressive chase he needed to pick up shots on practically every second hole.
‘Really, I would need to shoot a 14-under par weekend and Jordan would have to play a couple of average rounds, and neither of those two things look like they’re going to happen, so it’s going to be tough,’ he had said on Friday night.
Lightning streaked the Georgia sky as he talked and a long-threatened storm was preparing to burst over the city. Heavy falls that night were expected to soften the course and after a chilly and cloudy start, the sun was high and hot long before McIlroy commenced his round.
Yet there was spirit in him, too, as he had shot 31 on the back nine on Friday after an ignominious dip below the cut line in the first half of his round. It took him 40 shots to negotiate his opening nine holes that day, but he retired that night knowing he had hit upon form.
A 32 in the front nine yesterday confirmed as much – giving him 63 for his previous 18 holes over the two days – and turning six-under, eight behind Spieth, he was entitled to wonder again, and the words ‘just maybe’, ‘what if’, ‘possibly’ and ‘who knows?’ must have fluttered around him like butterflies as he prepared for the deep, captivating beauty of Amen Corner.
Yet up ahead Spieth was handling the pressure with an early birdie and McIlroy fell nine shots off him again before another flurry cut the gap to seven.
The leader has already been installed as McIlroy mark II, as if the first edition has out-lived his usefulness at the burned-up age of 25.
He proved here he had not, but Spieth looked like having a solution to every problem posed.
And as the day wore on, despite his gutsiest efforts to make it otherwise, McIlroy was drifting to the side once more, a frustrated wallflower within the azaleas’ bloom.