Mcilroy back at crash course
Masters favorite recalls ’11 collapse
AUGUSTA, Ga. — No, Rory Mcilroy did not revisit the white cabins to the left of the 10th hole at Augusta National Golf Club.
“I just had a quick glance on the way past walking down the middle of the fairway last week, and hopefully I’ll do the same thing during the week this week,” Mcilroy said with a smile Tuesday.
Mcilroy can laugh about it now, but last year he imploded on golf’s grandest stage with an 8-over-par 80 in the final round of the Masters that wiped out a four-stroke 54-hole lead and dropped him into a tie for 15th.
Leading by one at the turn, Mcilroy hit a tee shot on No. 10 that caromed off a tree and ended up 50 yards left of the fairway, between two white cabins. He hit trees twice more on the hole and took a triple bogey. He then three-putted No. 11 for a bogey and four-putted 12 for a double. His collapse was complete when his tee shot on No. 13 wound up in Rae’s Creek.
“Obviously, the first time I played the back nine last week, there are memories that come back and memories that you probably don’t want,” Mcilroy said. “It’s fine. I got that all out of the way and just looking forward to try to put myself in contention to try and win this thing. . . . It’s something that I learned from. I quickly forgot about it and moved on.”
Two months later, he won the U.S. Open in record fashion.
Mcilroy, 22, comes into the 76th Masters with 11 top-five finishes in his last 12 worldwide starts, including wins in Hong Kong and this year’s Honda Classic. He’s taking more of a businesslike approach this week. He shipped in three friends from Northern Ireland for last year’s tournament, but they’re not around this time.
“I think one of the things I learned was that, as a person and as a golfer, I wasn’t ready to win the Masters,” he said. “I really needed to think about what I needed to do to improve mentally and in different aspects of my game. I felt like I did that.”
So did Tiger Woods, who, along with Mcilroy and Phil Mickelson, is a favorite this week. Woods said McIlroy could be a chief rival for years.
“He has all of the makings of being a great champion for a long period of time,” Woods said. “Seems like every single tournament he plays in, he’s in the top 10, and that’s great to see.”
AUGUSTA, Ga. — There’s an angle to properly playing Augusta National: Figure out the angles. That’s what Geoff Ogilvy and many of the game’s best players say.
“The whole point of Augusta is to have your second shots, third shots and chip shots and putts going uphill as much as possible. You have to figure out the angles to do that,” says Ogilvy, who won the 2006 U.S. Open and whose best finish in six starts in the Masters is a tie for fourth last year.
Ogilvy says imagination is a must at Augusta. And never getting above the hole on the putting surfaces is another must.
“The greens are so fast and so slopey that if you get above the hole anywhere, you have a bad angle pretty much,” he says. “And if you have to go over bunkers or water at the wrong angle, say to a short pin, you have no chance.
“And there are a lot of putts you can’t take on. You can have a 20-foot putt with 15 feet of break if you want to hole it. But if you just go straight at the hole, it might dribble down close to the hole. You’ll never hole the putt, but you will two-putt. If you want to hole putts, you risk three-putts.”
With the severity of the greens and elevation changes, figuring out the proper angle of attack depends on the position of the pin, which can change the complexion of the entire hole and thus the plan of attack.
Every year, Ogilvy says, he learns something about the course that proves to be a benefit.
“It is a course that encourages attack,” Ogilvy says. “But if you miss with your attack, you are penalized so severely.”