Rory McIlroy is aware of the allegation but the rebuttal is firm. Mitigating circumstances aren’t typically factored in when a wait for a major championship victory stretching back to August 2014 – and an inability to capture the Masters – are discussed. To the dissenters, McIlroy has it too easy. Fame, money and marriage, it is said, have doused his competitive instincts.
“I don’t see that, because everyone else is in the same boat,” McIlroy says. “Everyone out here has a nice life, why am I any different? Maybe I just portray more of a sense of happiness, I don’t know. I am very happy and, whether I win or lose, I go home and I have everything that I need but that doesn’t make me any less motivated to go out and win.
“That [winning] is what I want to do. If I was just coming out here and going through the motions I would hate it, I’d want to do something else. I never want to get to the point in this game where I’m not trying 100% at everything I do. So maybe I portray a sense of harmony but it definitely isn’t complacency.”
In reality, the trappings associated with a Hollywood lifestyle aren’t remotely what makes the boy from Holywood, Northern Ireland, tick. There was an episode to back up McIlroy’s point earlier this year. When falling short at the Dubai Desert Classic the 28‑year‑old’s visible level of dejection contradicted any sense of cosiness. He remembers it well. “I went to the locker room and I nearly put my fist through a locker. I was just so angry at letting that tournament slip away. It was a great opportunity. I realise I won’t get an opportunity like that every week. I was angry. Of course I was angry.”
Happier moments were to come. McIlroy’s success at the Arnold Palmer Invitational two Sundays ago lifted a competitive burden – it was his first tournament success in 18 months – and reminded the world what this golfer at his best is like. Nobody in the game compares to McIlroy in full flow. His imminent challenge is to take an identical touch to Augusta National and the one major that has eluded him.
McIlroy is happy to contradict further assumptions. He insists, for example, that images of donning a Green Jacket do not resonate 12 months of any given year. “People would think it’s on my mind all the time,” he says. “Listen, I’d love the Green Jacket in the closet, to go back every year and use the champions’ locker room, to host dinner as the champion. Nobody could ever take that away from you. But I think about the Masters the week before I play it, because that’s when I prepare for it.”
The notion that the Masters somehow represents McIlroy’s destiny, or a logical career step, is the next to be batted away. “No one is owed anything, due anything, it’s not my turn,” he says. “I don’t believe in that stuff. My dad always used to say to me: ‘If it’s for you, it won’t go past you,’ and I hate that line because that’s not how it works. You have to go and do it yourself. It doesn’t just magically fall into your lap. I’m not due anything, I don’t deserve anything, everyone starts on an even playing field on Thursday morning. Whoever plays the best will win.”
McIlroy’s caution can be linked in part to the story of Ernie Els, a player for whom a Green Jacket was supposedly an ideal fit. The South African never did prevail in the first major of the year. “He went there as one of the best players in the world for a long time, as a major winner, he would play a practice round and Gary Player would come in and tell the media how well he was playing, how he just shot 64 and was going to win.”
McIlroy’s Masters approach is a fascinating one. It relates to a comfort level whereby an event so widely anticipated doesn’t have such a status in his mind as to prevent him from displaying the blissfully natural style which renders him such captivating viewing. It wasn’t always thus; in the past McIlroy has appeared mentally paralysed by the scale of a Masters triumph. Now, he refuses to apply undue pressure. It won’t consume him, it can’t consume him.
“I think that’s the worst thing to do,” he says. “The more pressure you put yourself under … there is already a lot of that from outside. You don’t want to compound that. The more you can freewheel it, relish it as an opportunity to do something great and enjoy it, the better.
“I’ll get a lot of opportunities at this; we have been watching the Winter Olympics where people have waited four, eight years. I at least get to do it once a year. It took Phil Mickelson how many tries until he got over the line in 2004? Now he has three Green Jackets. The more you play it, the more you get comfortable not just on the course but as soon as you get inside the gates.
“It is such a different week. It’s an event run by the members, it isn’t a normal tournament week. That’s why I always take a trip up prior because it makes you more comfortable, even to the point of saying hello to the staff and the chairman. There’s a lot of stuff you don’t have to do any other week because you’re not there again. At Augusta you make an effort.”
If – and McIlroy is adamant it has to be if – he solves the Augusta conundrum it will be of his own volition. He isn’t the type to pursue secrets of the Masters from former champions. “I like to work things out on my own, I feel like then I take ownership. I’ve never sought anyone out. That’s not me.
“Then when ultimately I do conquer or win something, I will 100% own it: ‘That was me, I know 100% what I’ve done and I know how to do it again.’ People have offered advice and I’ll take it or leave it but I’ll never seek it out. Maybe I’m too stubborn. If I want to figure something out I’ll do it, do it, do it until I get there. Some things take a little longer than others.”
Injury has been the key component but Mcllroy concedes he would have been surprised if he had been informed when departing Valhalla and the US PGA Championship of 2014 that he would enter the 2018 Masters having not yet claimed a fifth major title.
He was among those reduced to tears as Sergio García ended his major wait at Augusta last year but there has, too, been a niggling McIlroy envy, which he is candid enough to relay.
“Of course, there always is,” McIlroy says. “It’s tough because you think: ‘That could have been me, I wish that was me.’ There is always an aspect of professional jealousy, be that Jordan [Spieth] winning three majors in the last three years or whatever, but it’s respectful as well. I 100% respect what these guys do because I know how hard it is. To be on a pace of winning one per year is phenomenal.
“Part of you wants to be in their shoes. I don’t mind seeing guys win a first one; I was really happy for Dustin Johnson, for example. But any time someone lifts a trophy and it’s not me? A fraction of me doesn’t like it.”
McIlroy does not shy away from the absence of his name at the business end of the Masters since the catastrophic events which befell him on the Sunday back nine in 2011. That he hasn’t spurned subsequent opportunity perhaps adds to his ability to accept the lack of a Masters win from an otherwise glittering CV. “I’ve had four top 10s but never really contended. I’d rather have been back in the box seat and seen what happened because to get in contention you have to be playing well. You can’t fake it there. There are other courses where you can kind of get by and be in contention; there you can’t, you have to be on with every aspect of your game.
“The closest was when I played in the last group on the third day with Jordan, 2016, that didn’t go as planned. I’d love again to put myself in a position like that after two days because I feel like I learnt a lot that day, I took on shots that I shouldn’t have. Even just to get myself into that position, I feel like I’d handle that a lot better. Any time you don’t do something right is a learning opportunity and more than anywhere else in the world that we play, I feel like I have learned a lot of lessons at Augusta.
“I would just love to put myself in a position where I can put into practice some of the things I feel I have learned. I just want to give myself a chance. If I give myself a chance, I feel when I’m in contention with all these other guys I can hold my own.”
Few would begrudge him that Masters opportunity. Just don’t dare suggest any link with destiny to the man himself.
