There was a crackle in the air during the Masters’ third round but, thick and close as the clouds were, the energy had nothing to do with the forecast storms. Rory McIlroy brought the course, and the crowd, alive with some daydream golf, the kind of stuff the rest of us play when we close our eyes and drift away. Augusta’s placements were designed to be kind, with all that rain in mind, but in the end all that came was a little sprinkling in the morning and a heavy shower in the afternoon, which meant McIlroy, and the other leaders, were able to take every advantage of it in between.
Of course anyone who wants to win around here needs a little good luck somewhere along the way. And McIlroy got his on the 1st tee. His drive was flying wide left towards the 9th fairway when it hit a tall pine and bounced back down into the second cut. He made par with a chip in to four feet.
In those early holes it seemed almost as if he had become carried away with trying to make the most of the damp conditions, which suited him just fine since he hits it so far. And at the 2nd hole he smashed his drive 348 yards, so far that it fetched up in the gallery way beyond the bunker.
It was here that McIlroy performed his first bit of wizardry. His ball was in the pine needles, right up against a little cherry tree. He punched it out all of 250 yards, scattering blossoms with his follow-through. The ball rolled right to the back left corner of the green, right by the hole. So that was two fine par saves in a row.
Then the birdies started – one on the 3rd hole and another on the 4th – both made with snaking putts from 20ft or so. He could have had another on the 5th, after a preposterous second shot from the fairway bunker, but he left a 13ft putt just short.
McIlroy’s partner, Henrik Stenson, was playing a fine round himself, steady par bar a bogey at the 2nd. But that left him drifting in McIlroy’s slipstream as he shot up the leaderboard. At the par-three 6th McIlroy’s tee-shot could scarcely have been better if he had moved it by telekinesis. It left him a two-foot tap-in for birdie. McIlroy was so happy with the stroke that he was bobbing up and down on his toes like Tigger. A little boy behind the tee-box shouted out “Oh my god! That was AMAZING!” This was the stuff that makes kids fall in love.
If the boy admired that, he should have been at the 8th green, where McIlroy rattled in a chip from 25 yards. It bounced on the ridge of the green and would have flown right off the other side of the green if it had not hit the flag stick on the way through. That eagle took him to nine under.
Stenson, meanwhile, got his birdie game going on the 7th. He got a lucky break of his own when his drive hit a Swedish journalist in the ribs and the ball bounced back on to the fairway. He made a birdie there, with his splash out of the front bunker, and another at the 8th, with a pin-point pitch in. It has been a long while since Stenson has played so well at Augusta, where his best finish is tied-14th in 2014.
McIlroy, too, was playing with rare flair and confidence – until he got to Amen Corner, where he left a birdie putt up at the 11th and had to play out of the bunker at the 12th. Then the rain came, a heavy shower that started and stopped with equal suddenness, as if someone was working it with a switch. It was at its worst when McIlroy was on the 13th fairway and he missed his approach wide right. But he managed to scramble out of an azalea bush to save par.
Exactly how McIlroy made birdie at the 15th, where he pulled his drive so wide, only he knows. His tee shot got him in trouble at the 17th too, and the par he made there, with a dinky chip, was just as impressive.
His birdie at the 18th was the icing on top. It meant he finished in 65, his best round here since 2011. He was smiling all the while, having a grand old time out there. His only problem was that Patrick Reed was enjoying himself so much too.
