Hope, as much as expectation, springs eternal. For Rory McIlroy – who, if you must know, has started to binge watch “Bridgerton” with wife Erica and also flipped from non-fiction in starting to read “The Reckoning” by John Grisham – his latest drive down Magnolia Lane may have come a day later than originally planned but with the same sense of anticipation.
Here he was, back in a familiar place; and, in contrast to the grey rain clouds of Monday which had allowed for little or no prep work for those players who’d registered, McIlroy’s later arrival was to sunshine and giddy galleries and a full line of players on the range with their white-suited caddies at their beck and call.
McIlroy was dressed in black, his white Nike swish the only contrast to the dark clothing, and there was a chirpiness about him as he revealed that the elbow injury – subtly revealed only after he finished the Houston Open a fortnight ago – was, well, not an issue any more. Fully fit, physically; and, hopefully, mentally too.
A thoughtfully constructed advance itinerary could hardly have worked out any better for McIlroy in his perennial quest to come to the Masters and apply the missing piece in the jigsaw in his quest to complete the career Grand Slam: wins in the AT&T Pebble Beach pro-am and The Players already this season on the PGA Tour have him as the only multiple winner of the season, as good a guide to form as you will find.
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The weather front which arrived into Augusta on Sunday and lingered into Monday meant limited practice for those players who had sought a head start on their preparatory work. In McIlroy’s case, his later arrival didn’t impact at all, as the Northern Irishman had made two advance missions, on the Monday before he played in Houston and again on the Monday afterwards.
And, last week, McIlroy had his coach Michael Bannon on hand for all of the nitty gritty: “We were doing some practice and played quite a bit of golf and tried to stay as sharp as I could. Yeah, it’s been a good week, and I’m obviously looking forward to getting this thing going on Thursday.”
McIlroy is no longer the bushy haired, bright-eyed boy who first made that drive down the most famous avenue in golf back in 2009. This is his 17th appearance in the Masters, with all of the mental scar tissue that comes with it along the way.
Where once he figured things out himself, these days there is more than a helpful hand from someone who has been around the block. His relationship with sports psychologist Dr Bob Rotella has developed over time. “We’ve always chatted, even if we haven’t worked officially together. We’ve always kept in touch. talking about not getting too much into results and outcomes. We talk about trying to chase a feeling on the golf course.
“Like if you’re on the golf course, what way do you want to feel when you’re playing golf. It’s not something I obviously just do here, but I do every week that I compete. If I can chase that feeling and make that the important thing, then hopefully the golf will take care of itself.”
There is a wise head on those shoulders, as McIlroy – now 35 years old, with a 36th birthday looming in a matter of weeks on May 4th – looks to use what has been won and lost to extend his legacy.
“I think over the course of my career I think I’ve showed quite a lot of resilience from setbacks, and I feel like I’ve done the same again, especially post-June last year [after the heartbreak of the US Open loss, to Bryson DeChambeau] and the golf that I’ve played since then, and it’s something that I’m really proud of.
“You have setbacks and you have disappointments, but as long as you can learn from them and move forward and try to put those learnings into practice I feel like is very, very important. I feel like I’ve showed that quite a lot over the course of my career.
“Look, when you have a long career like I have had, luckily, you sort of just learn to roll with the punches, the good times, the bad times, knowing that if you do the right work and you practice the right way, that those disappointments will turn into good times again pretty soon.”
Those good times never truly stopped, not in the greater scheme of his careers with wins on the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and Ryder Cups coming in those years when the Majors remained elusive. McIlroy’s four Majors came quick and seemingly easily in claiming the US Open, the PGA Championship (twice) and the Claret Jug at The Open but since last lifting the Wanamaker Trophy in 2014 there have been a series of close calls and near misses and, to use his own word, “heartbreak.”
Scars, even mental ones, heal, though.
“Once you go through those heartbreaks, as I call them, or disappointments, you get to a place where you remember how it feels and you wake up the next day and you’re like, ‘yeah, life goes on, it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be’.
“And I think it’s going through those times, especially in recent memory, where the last few years I’ve had chances to win some of the biggest golf tournaments in the world and it hasn’t quite happened. But life moves on. You dust yourself off and you go again. I think that’s why I’ve become a little more comfortable in laying everything out there and being somewhat vulnerable at times.”
