remains so phenomenally gifted. Of
course, those seven holes are a mere
microcosm. More significant is the way
that he dug himself out when his
Masters appeared to be sliding away
from him. That is the grit that WoodsWhen Rory McIlroy unleashed his
driver on the first tee here yesterday
morning, the crowd laughed. Not at
him, not because it was a foolish or
inaccurate shot, they simply found it
hilarious because it was so extraordina-
ry. The swing, the beauty, its shape, the
body turn, the harnessing of power and
then the accuracy and the distance — it
is truly something to behold.
It was also one of his best shots of the
day. He had a good putt for birdie on
that first green and missed it. And from
there, his round resembled that of Tiger
Woods the day before.
He was wearing the same azalea pink
that Woods wore on Thursday. He was
untidy and inaccurate the way Woods
was on Thursday and he had to
scramble and rescue himself from
trouble the way that Woods had the day
before too.
Now, McIlroy has been compared to
Woods for much of his life, as others
have, but no one as much as McIlroy; he
McIlroy embarks on furious
game of catch-up yet again
The stats on his barren major years
are fascinating. They show that he is
terrible on day one and then executes a
furious game of catch-up. Usually —
here in Augusta in particular — he
gives himself too big a lead to chase.
When his game deserted him mid-
round yesterday, it looked like the chase
was already gone. The stats, here, show
him to be the longest driver in the field
— but what use is that when your irons
to the greens are so loose? He made
bogey on 10, then had the crowd diving
for cover from his second on 11 and
finished with double bogey.
At that point, the chase seems
irrelevant; it is more about whether he
is still going to be here at the weekend.
And how do you then reset, when, of
all holes, you have the par-three 12th to
follow? Not easily, he joked afterwards,
especially when you are watching
Spieth ahead of you hitting two into the
water.
Yet the next seven holes were a near-
perfect reset. He made two birdies, gave
himself another four birdie putts and
made a great rescue on the 18th.
You are not, at this point, watching a
man whose psychology, whose broad
world view and whose reprioritisation
of his game have negatively affected his
golf. That is partly because McIlroy4 2GS Saturday April 9 2022 | the times
Sport The Masters
probably wearies of the comparison but
there is a reason that this newspaper
report is sending McIlroy’s second
round straight back through that Tiger
filter.
McIlroy was the subject of the cover
story of Sports Illustrated yesterday
under the headline “Rethinking the
next Tiger,” the point being that he the
trajectory of his career started out like
Woods’s but then tailed off in a very
different direction.
On the tee one group before McIlroy
yesterday was another player fleetingly
dubbed “the next”. That was Jordan
Spieth, the 28-year-old American. Like
McIlroy, Spieth won a cluster of early
career majors. Like McIlroy, he is one
major short of a grand slam. There was
a period when McIlroy versus Spieth
was perceived to be the big new rivalry
of the game. Yet Spieth hasn’t added to
his tally of majors since 2017. McIlroy
hasn’t won one since 2014.
The core of the Sports Illustrated
article was the comparison to Woods
and, as the sub-headline read: “His total
un-Tiger-ness is what makes him
interesting.”
The theme was not unfamiliar. It was
about McIlroy’s lively intelligence, the
breadth of his focus when, you might
say, Woods’s focus could not be morenarrow. It was about McIlroy’s
reflections on family and other matters
outside of golf and his assertion that
there is more out there in his life that
occupies a greater importance than
golf. Woods, the comparison goes,
never shuffles the golf downwards in
his priorities.
It was basically saying that McIlroy
can tell himself as long as he likes that
he can re-evaluate the importance of
his career, but that deep down, he isn’t
remotely convinced.
This was the crux of it: “No matter
how much he talks openly about his life
off the turf, or about his attempts to find
something extra on the course, it seems
clear that he has not yet found peace.
He is caught between the comforts of
his stardom and the unease that comes
with knowing he is underachieving. He
has tried to convince himself, and us,
that he is OK with his golf life, and it
clearly hasn’t worked.”
If you followed McIlroy around a
breezy Augusta yesterday, you couldn’t
conclude that anything was clear or
definitive at all. You would have seen
him blow an early birdie chance, you
would then have seen him battling to
hold his game together, and then at the
turn, you would have seen it completely
going away from him.Owen
Slot
Chief Sports
Writer
McIlroy makes
a birdie on the
2nd, before his
back-nine
troubles set in