MAC BACK IN PACK AGAIN
Green Jacket looks a distant dream for off-colour McIlroy
IT WAS a hard day at The Masters for everyone in the field yesterday but a particularly tough one for Rory McIlroy.
The 32-year-old’s latest tilt at the career Grand Slam was blown off course after a ragged second round in the wind that left his dream of a maiden Green Jacket looking as far away as ever.
Thirty-one of the last 32 Masters winners were in the top 10 at the halfway point – the chance would be a fine thing for McIlroy. After another over-par start to a Major on Thursday, he let slip three shots in two holes at the start of a blustery back nine yesterday to plunge further down a bunched field.
McIlroy claimed before the event to be at peace with whatever Augusta has in store
for him during his career now, but acceptance must sometimes give way to private despair. This is his 14th attempt to win The Masters and so far it has proved a fruitless pursuit.
Plenty of golfers play in plenty of Masters without winning one but McIlroy is not any old golfer.
His talent makes the gap between ambition and reward since the last of his four Majors eight years ago all the more galling.
If it is frustrating for those watching him, imagine how McIlroy must really feel about it.
If goodwill from the galleries counted for anything he would already have the missing garment in his wardrobe.
Americans tend to root for Americans but the loudest cheers at the first tee were for McIlroy rather than US playing partner Brooks Koepka or the unassuming Englishman Matt Fitzpatrick.
McIlroy is undoubtedly the most popular overseas golfer at The
Masters and, alongside Jordan Spieth, perhaps ranked joint second in the popularity stakes behind Tiger Woods.
The patrons, rustling along with their Masters merchandise bags, would have loved more of an excuse to cheer him but instead found themselves taking cover as they came under attack from the world No.9 mid-round.
It was not easy for anyone with the capricious winds and some testing pins stirring the Augusta pot but McIlroy could not blame the conditions for everything. The round started well enough as he brought admiring gasps from the patrons around the first-tee box with a cannonball drive that split the fairway. He could not convert his birdie opportunity from eight feet though.
He did birdie the par-five second from a distinctly unpromising position in the trees off the tee. However after a 15-foot par save at the next, he gave the shot back with a scruffy three-putt from the fringe at the difficult fifth after missing the fairway to the left.
The scorable eighth hole came and went with no return after more bother off the tee when he went way right.
Turning at level par for the day was no calamity. He was still only five shots behind leader Sungjae Im as he walked past the giant scoreboard in the valley.
But when McIlroy bogeyed the 10th from the middle of the fairway after an awful approach, with his seven-foot par putt failing to touch the hole, the alarm bells began to ring.
The second shot into the 11th which arrowed into the crowd to the right triggered a poor double bogey. The deep sigh McIlroy let out as he left the green after his four-foot bogey putt slid by looked like resignation.
He is no quitter and bounced back with birdies at 13 and 16 but the sense remained that a weekend run will be a stretch.
Two rounds of 73 have left him a lot to do. Probably too much.