Late on Sunday evening at last year’s Masters, soon after Jordan Spieth slipped on the Green Jacket for the first time, talk turned to his burgeoning rivalry with Rory McIlroy. Spieth, with characteristic humility, was quick to play it down. “I don’t know, as far as a rivalry goes, right now,” Spieth said. But his self-confidence and competitiveness run even stronger than his modesty. So he paused for a moment, smiled, then said: “I’m looking forward to getting in the heat of the moment with him a couple of times in the near future, see if we can battle it out and test our games.” In the end Spieth, McIlroy, and everyone else had to wait 12 months to see them paired on a major stage, till they were top of the bill in the third round of the 80th Masters.
Through the first half of the day it felt a little like everyone was biding their time, waiting for the big show to start. By 2.45pm, thousands had gathered around the 1st tee, fairway and green. The gallery was almost as thick as it used to be when Tiger Woods was in his prime. Most of the fans were teetering on their tiptoes trying to catch a glimpse of these two young stars, each of them equally popular with the crowd. Those who could see were treated, instead, to an absorbing afternoon of expert play in bewilderingly difficult conditions. Spieth made 73. McIlroy 77. Amazingly, that still left the Northern Irishman tied for 11th.
It seemed like Augusta National was making everyone pay for the way Spieth played here last year, when, aged only 21, he made a record total of 28 birdies on his way to a tournament score of 18 under par, equalling the mark set by Tiger Woods. And so, with a little help from the fierce wind, which swirled and gusted between the trees, and the committee men, who were entirely merciless with their pin placements, the course punished Spieth and everyone else; as if it was determined to remind everyone that it is, and always has been, tough enough to get the better of every golfer, however great.
On the 2nd we got the first hint of how the two rounds were going to unfold. McIlroy drove into the bunker, and then missed a 9ft putt for birdie. Spieth made a fine uphill putt, from 35ft at the front of the green, and then another seven-footer for birdie. Then McIlroy dropped a shot at the 3rd, after hitting another bunker and missing a putt from only a foot out. Spieth, on the other hand, scrambled a par even after he hit his tee shot way over on the right side.
Hot as the day was, McIlroy’s putter seemed to have turned icy cold. On the 5th he did come within inches of sinking a brilliant birdie from 60ft, the ball running up a steep slope to the plateau and curling around to the left. If he had only made it, his round might have wound up very different. But he didn’t. And soon afterwards, when Spieth finally gave him an opportunity to take a chunk out of the lead, McIlroy failed to take it. On the 7th Spieth hit his second from the first cut into a bunker, and his exit shot ran 20ft past. McIlroy, pin-high and 20 feet shy, missed the moment by hitting his putt well beyond the hole. It could have been a two-shot swing. Instead, both men made bogey.
After that, the confidence seemed to ebb out of McIlroy’s game. He scrambled around the par-five 8th. After finding another bunker from the tee, he caught a little hillock with his second shot and had to watch the ball run 50 yards back down the hill towards his feet. Spieth hit a superb third shot to four feet, so followed up his bogey with a birdie, as he so often seems to do. At the 10th McIlroy was in the trees, hard by a trunk, and had to punch his way out for another bogey. It got worse. At the 11th he was in the trees again. This time he stopped for a long chat with his caddie, JP Fitzgerald, and the two of them concocted a plan to hook out and around on to the green. The ball did move from right to left, so much so that it curved right off the grass and fell into the water.
McIlroy’s bogey putt hit the lip, so he dropped two shots. But then, so did Spieth, as he took four putts himself, three of them from inside five feet. Again, though, he recovered from the setback by making a birdie at the next hole. He then made two more, one at the 14th and another at the 15th. McIlroy, meanwhile, was still searching for his first birdie of the round. He had a final shot at earning one on the 18th, with a putt from eight feet. And he missed it. It was the first time McIlroy been through an entire round at a major without making a single birdie since the Open in 2010.
Spieth made an ugly finish. He made a bogey at the 17th and a double-bogey at the 18th, where he had to hit out of the pine needles from the side of the 10th fairway then left his approach shot well short. It meant he finished the day as he started it, with a one-shot lead. The difference was that now it was Smylie Kaufman who was right behind him, not McIlroy. The day was a test of their skills, just as Spieth had imagined it would be back in 2015. And there was no doubt at all who came out on top. You guess Spieth might have seen that coming, too.
