More than twice as many people have walked on the moon as have won golf’s career Grand Slam. There is a reason for that. It takes an iconic, historically great golfer to win all four majors in a career.
At the age of 27, Rory McIlroy can make that list of five golfers six with a win at the 2017 Masters.
McIlroy has a mercurial relationship with Augusta National. He said earlier this year that he’s a “prick” in the weeks leading up to the first major of 2017. He has often expressed frustration over not being able to solve the puzzle of the old nursery.
You get the feeling that McIlroy’s relationship with this course and this tournament will be shaped for good over the next five years. Win one (or more) and his trajectory is set. He will immediately become the greatest European of all time. He will have all four in the bag and a lifetime invitation to explore the grounds of this mystical place.
But lose heartbreakingly or miss a couple of cuts, and it could go the other way.
“I fell out of patience with the place,” another four-time major winner, Ernie Els, told the Augusta Chronicle recently. He finished second twice and in the top six five times in a row in the early 2000s. Els lost to Vijay Singh by three in 2000 and Phil Mickelson by one in 2004.
“I guess it’s a mindset you go in with,” Els continued. “Certain players get really good breaks and fall in love with the place and just know if they hit it they’ve got a good chance of getting a good bounce. And those certain players have won one, two, three, four of them. They kind of figured it out.
“You can’t tell me a bounce I don’t know on the place, but for me, I kind of got on the wrong side of it and momentum went kind of against me and that’s that. I look at Phil, who won quite a few Masters, but you can say the same thing about him at the U.S. Open. The Masters will always have a little bit of sting to it, but not in a bad way.”
McIlroy is still young, yes, but so was Els in 2004. McIlroy will get 10 or 15 or 20 more swipes at the thing, but at some point he has to hit paydirt.
He knows it. The greatest week on the golf calendar becomes a burden come the first week in April. McIlroy even told ESPN recently that he would not feel complete without a green jacket.
But it’s not as if he’s missing cuts and playing poorly here. McIlroy played in the final pairing with Jordan Spieth in the third round of last year’s Masters, but Spieth beat him by four and McIlroy had to settle for a T10. It was his third top 10 at Augusta.
He said recently that in trying to unlock the secret to entering that champions locker room at Augusta National, he tries mostly to focus on his golf in this week.
“It’s trying not to get swept up in it all by ... reading articles about it ... I’m a huge fan of golf, if people haven’t realized, and I like to read stuff. If I pick up a magazine or ... I go on Twitter, I like to read articles about what’s going on in the world of golf.
“But unfortunately, I’m a subject sometimes in those articles, and it’s better that I don’t read them because it only places more pressure on you and whatever. So, it’s just about getting away from it and not being swept up in it.
“Being able to renting the house at Augusta and being able to get back there and completely switch off and spend time with my family or spend time with my friends and not have anything relating to the tournament on TV or just try to keep it nice and calm.
“But look, it’s the biggest tournament of the year for me, for obvious reasons, and I’ve never made any secrets about that. I’m very open about that. It is. And whether that’s a good or a bad thing ... it should be the same like no matter if it’s that’s golf course I’m playing against the same guys that I’ve beaten before at the biggest tournaments in the world, and there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to do it again. So that’s my mindset going into it.”
He’s not wrong about that. There is a hang up, though. It doesn’t have to be long-lasting, but McIlroy thinks about it. Only 13 golfers have won their first Masters in their ninth appearance or later. This is McIlroy’s ninth appearance.
You know he thinks about what it would be like to hold all four of the big ones. He has to. Who wouldn’t?!
“If I can keep it somewhat fun, you’re going and playing Augusta, you’re getting to play Augusta, you’re getting to play at least six rounds around there. Who else gets to do that? That’s pretty cool in itself. Keep it fun, try not to put too much attention on the whole thing and just go play,” he said.
The answer might be as simple as remembering that you’re Rory effing McIlroy, and you are generationally great. Or it might be playing 99 holes leading into the Masters which McIlroy said he’s done in the last few weeks.
“I’ve realized that the more I can get comfortable with this golf course, and the Club as a whole; the more I can get comfortable in the environment and the surroundings, the better,” said McIlroy. “So that’s why I come up here just before the Match Play and played 27 holes, and I came up Monday, Tuesday, and played 54 in that two‑day span.
“The more I can just play the golf course and almost make it seem like second nature to me, where to hit the balls on the green and where to start putts and know where the pin positions are; the more that can become second nature, the better. That’s why I played a lot of holes and played a lot of matches, as well.
“I played matches, shot scores, played one ball, tried to do it that way, because obviously that’s what we’re doing in the tournament and I thought that was a good way to prepare.”
So another Masters rolls around, and McIlroy fields another set of questions about what it takes and whether he can do it. He is weary of those. He must be. He is probably as ready to rid himself of the questions as he is to wear the green jacket itself.
He will get questions about his clubs and his clothes and the way he plays the par 5s. He will get questions about his ball flight and his putting grip and his new contract. He will get questions about everything every superstar who has ever played here has ever gotten. He will just get more of them because the scrutiny on top golfers have never been more intense.
But the question that stands above them all when it comes to Rory McIlroy and Augusta National is a simple one.
Come Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday, will he have an answer?
