Masters 2023: Rory McIlroy resumes search for peace in tournament that has tormented him

On the Golf Channel, a day after Rory McIlroy had flunked his chance to win the 2018 Masters, a sports psychologist called Dr Gio Valiante accused McIlroy of “five hours of choking.” It was the kind of trigger-happy, reductive response that any punter could have spouted on social media, but Valiante had some standing in the game as the mental coach who had helped Justin Rose win the 2013 US Open, and he had worked with a host of other PGA players too.

The language was emotive and provocative, but some version of that thought would have crossed the mind of everybody watching: McIlroy had started the day in the final group, three shots behind the leader Patrick Reed, and had finished the day six shots back, in an empty tie for fifth. McIlroy’s 74 on that Sunday was his second-worst final round score at Augusta, superior only to the 80 he shot in 2011, the only other time he had given himself a chance to win the tournament.

In his post-round interview McIlroy made a fleeting, unsubstantiated reference to “mindset” and left the word hanging. All the things we thought we saw in that final round, though, had their source in that concept, and all its tributaries.

From McIlroy’s viewpoint, he needed to find answers that would make a difference the next time he put himself in that position. But he also knew that questions about what happened that day would follow him for the rest of the season. To feed that beast he would need a plausible narrative for public consumption too.

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In no other sport is there so much on-site media access to the elite players, and on bad days that process must be wearing. In McIlroy’s case he is exceptionally generous in his answers, and even in the homogenised environment of a press conference, he is always liable to say something revealing or thoughtful. It doesn’t have to be the whole truth to qualify as honest or authentic.

So, for McIlroy, the Masters became the big, recurring, unavoidable question in his career. Verbatim transcripts of McIlroy’s Masters’ press conferences are freely available on the ASAP Sports website, and gathered together over the last 14 years, they amount to an almost accidental portrait of him and his ever-changing life in golf. Most of his press conferences in that setting run to more than 4,000 words, but only a shot-glass measure of what he said would have been reported.

A year after his final day crash in the 2011 Masters he was still answering questions about his recovery. Fishing for a yarn, one questioner asked McIlroy if there had been “one phone call or letter” that had made a difference.

Straight away he started talking about a call he took from Greg Norman, a couple of days after the Masters, when McIlroy was brooding in a hotel room in Malaysia, honouring a playing commitment he had made before the sky fell in. Norman had famously blown a big final-day lead at Augusta too, and he reached out, hoping he could help, and believing he could. “It was great coming from him,” said McIlroy. Look at them now: public enemies, forever divorced from consoling phone calls.

He told a story, too, about visiting Tiger Woods when he was still getting over his horrendous car crash a couple of years ago. At Woods’ home is a display case that contains the trophies from his 15 Major triumphs, but nothing else. Woods has won 82 PGA Tour events in total, but the other trophies were scattered in other places he couldn’t remember.

“I was driving home and I was thinking, ‘That’s all he cared about,’” said McIlroy. “But I’m just thinking to myself, ‘How easy must that have felt for him if all he cares about is four weeks a year? [for the Majors]’ The other stuff must have been like practice. That’s a cool perspective to have, right?”

McIlroy knew that by telling that story he was shining another light on the gaping hole in his Majors resume, but in the 14 years that he has turned up at Augusta without a green jacket he has never ducked those questions.

Some angles would come up all the time, like his dull starts (level par on day one in total – averaging a destructive two over par for the last four years). Or the rounds when he committed self-sabotage (80, 77, 76, 79, 77, 75, 76). For years, his poor scoring on the par 5s was a recurring theme, but that has been resolved: eight under for those holes last year, seven under in 2020. One less reason to fail.

Preposterously, he was asked about the career Grand Slam at his very first Masters press conference, simply because Gary Player had preceded him into the interview room that day, and he had raised the possibility that one of the young guns might accomplish it by the age of 22. He name-checked McIlroy.

“Is that a year from now?” McIlroy asked, still a few weeks short of his 20th birthday, trying frantically to compute the numbers.

“Maybe two [majors] a year,” the moderator said, serving it on a plate, as a Grand Slam club sandwich, with chips.

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After 2014, though, by which time the Masters was the only Major he hadn’t won, questions about the career Grand Slam became an annual observance. “This is one I wish I caught earlier, I guess. I had a chance,” he said in 2016. “Each and every year that passes that I don’t [win] it will become increasingly more difficult.”

That’s seven years ago. Has his story changed since then? “I would say [there is] less pressure,” he said last year. Maybe that’s true; or maybe he must convince himself that it’s true.

“I think my grit [as a player] comes from my failures,” he said in 2020, “and I don’t have to look any further than this place.”

In spite of the torments it has visited on him, though, McIlroy is in love with the place: “My best experiences of Augusta have been when it’s not Masters week,” he said in 2019. “It’s quiet, it’s serene. You know, you could describe it as a spiritual place. When you get on the grounds at Augusta, and it’s not Masters week, it’s very similar to walking into an empty church. It’s got that aura.”

Maybe this week, at last, it will give him some peace.

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