Sunday afternoon and Sky were whipping us into a frenzy ahead of the final round of the Masters, like we needed any more whipping. Even if your firm belief is that golf courses should be nationalised and used for walking dogs, which they should, the first three rounds at Augusta would have left you in a tizzy. Epically marvellous.
“It’s a two-horse race,” Paul McGinley declared after the third round, reckoning that nobody but Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau was in with a shout.
It was not a two-horse race. Or at least not those two horses.
Shane Lowry, among others, would have been entitled to feel aggrieved, but so little had we seen of Shane and the among others for long stretches of the tournament, you might have ended up believing that Rory and Bryson made up the entire field.
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A case in point, of course, was when our telly folk cornered Shane for a chat after his bogeys in the last two holes of his third round. The gist of it was kinda like, “yes, your granny has just died in a hand-gliding accident – so sad – but what did you make of Rory’s round?”
“I’m not going to stand here and talk about Rory for 10 minutes, I’m trying to win the tournament as well,” our Shane replied. “I know that’s what you all want me to talk about, but I’ve just had a shit finish ... I’m pissed off right now, so I’m just going to leave.”
For that response alone, he deserved a green jacket.
Still, come Sunday afternoon, Sky’s sole focus was on Rory and Bryson. “We’ve got two contrasting characters,” pundit-caddie Billy Foster told Sarah Stirk. “Rory would have been sleeping with a sick bucket at the side of his bed last night, then you’ve got the bearded lady in the circus, DeChambeau.”
Now, the image of Rory sleeping with a sick bucket would have had you feeling a bit nauseous yourself if your heart was set on him winning the damn thing, and more importantly, ending McGinley’s telly shifts psychoanalysing the fella. Has any Irish sporting person been more psychoanalysed? Maybe only Roy?
But, yes, the consensus was that there was a smidgen of pressure on his shoulders to finally complete that grand slam. “I would argue that it’s most pressure any player has ever faced in the history of a final round of a major championship,” said Brandel Chamblee, opting not to entirely underplay it.
Rory had, though, heightened expectations by providing some otherworldly moments in his opening rounds, like that eagle in his third. “Are you kidding me?,” said Butch Harmon, who needs to trademark that line. “Is this Disneyland or is this golf? It’s the magic kingdom here! Oh my God! Anybody got a Valium?”
As for his approach shot to the 15th. “Hang it on the wall, that’s Mona Lisa,” said Brandel, going all Louvre-ish on us.
Much to Nick “in my day” Faldo’s dismay, Bryson was in the running too. “Bryson ls like a bison in a china shop,” he said of the fella, his distaste for his muscly approach to the game of golf never hidden. Nor, incidentally, did Nick ever hide the fact that he won the Masters on three occasions, turning up for Sky duty wearing a green jacket, much like the rest of us would turn up at a school reunion wearing the medal we won for triumphing in the high jump in 1982. Lest anyone forget.
Anyway, Sky started that Sunday coverage with clips of Rory’s past major meltdowns, accompanied by a melancholic soundtrack and slow-mos of him looking crestfallen. And then he had a double bogey on the first and it felt like deja vu all over again, Bryson the Bison going into the lead. “A horror start,” Ewen Murray whispered.
By the ninth? Rory four up. A majestic start, Ewen nigh on bellowed. An uppy-downy game, this. “Did I mention I won the Masters three times?” Nick almost said, but trying to fit into that green jacket had taken his breath away.
The second nine? More ups and down than a rollercoaster in an elevator. Rory would produce some magic, and the rabbit he pulled from the hat would run off. It ended with McIlroy trying to sink a putt on 18 to win it. He missed.
A sudden-death play-off with Rose beckoned. It ended with Rory trying to sink a putt on 18 to win it. And guess what? He nailed it. Arms aloft, Rory was the picture of happiness at the end. Hang it in the Louvre.
