AUGUSTA, Ga. — There’s more Charlie Brown in this Rory McIlroy than you might realize. You see it, now and again, in clubhouse locker rooms, with his cap high on his head and the brim pointing toward 3 o’clock, his cheeks filled with air. You saw it at Augusta National Sunday night, in the witching hour, on 18. The only thing he had to do was hit something in play, with any club. He drove it wildly right, where no 71-hole, two-shot leader has stood before. In this age when we think we know everything, the defending champion knew nothing. Didn’t know where his ball was. Didn’t know if he would be the first player in Masters history to cough up a six-shot, 36-hole lead. A double bogey would mean a playoff. A playoff is a crap shoot.
He marched off that tee. His parents were in the clubhouse. Millions of us were in the dark.
Where is it?
Does he have a shot?
Is this really happening?
THIS GAME OF GOLF. No sport has more mystery to it, no sport is more beguiling. Maybe not for Tiger in his prime, who was so good that his relentless winning was majestic, boring and inevitable. But the thing about Rory’s golf is that the game’s odd and captivating beauty is there for all of us to see. He was 12 under through 36 holes and had a six-shot lead. He was 12 under through 72 holes. Day to day, hole to hole, swing to swing, the golfer is never exactly the same. It’s so odd, isn’t it? McIlroy talked about it, the ever-changing golfer, Sunday night, in his — spoiler alert! — winner’s press conference.
“You have a lot of time to think,” McIlroy said. “You’re out there a long time. There’s a long time between shots. There’s a long time between rounds. Of all the big sports, I think it’s the most mental, the most challenging mentally. I think it’s hard to stay in the same mental space for four days in a row. I was in a great mental space for the tee shot on 13, for example. All of my practice rounds here in the weeks leading into the tournament, hit it great there. Then Thursday, Friday and Saturday, I didn’t sniff the fairway. These little things happen that make you second-guess things. It’s just very hard to stay in the same spot mentally for a long period of time.”
We hear you, brother — we hear ya!
This from a man who chipped twice with a putter on Sunday, once from off the green and up a lush hill at 13 (for par) and from over the green on 16, also for par. Like, we can relate. But that chip he hit from the right side of 17, also for par, was dead solid perfect. To play that shot, at that moment, with the world watching you? There are about 32 golfers in the world with the skill and mental strength to pull that off.
We stand in awe.
He won the tournament with those three shots, along with the puff of wind that helped his thinned third shot into 15 pitch in the hill and bounce forward, not backward into the lake.
Luck. Dumb luck, really. Life requires luck.
In victory, he was asked if he could explain the golf-life connection.
“Good things come to those who wait, maybe?” he said in that lovely sing-song Irish way. “Just keep going. Keep your head down and keep going. If you put the hours in and work on the right things, eventually it will come good for you.”
Even if it’s not true it’s a good game plan, anyhow.
TWO P.M. WAS CREEPING IN. Under the tree, up by the clubhouse and in the shade, it was almost cool, almost breezy, players and caddies coming through, amid the jackets and the lucky-badged. Out on the course, the fairways and the tees and the greens are baking. Rory McIlroy was in a practice bunker, the glare of the white sand in his eyes. This was the first Masters in 15 years without a drop of rain.
For two days, McIlroy could do no wrong, even as he was driving it all over the map. Leading by a touchdown halfway through. You may remember his closeout golf early Friday night, supper on the stove: birdies on 15, 16, 17 and 18. Maybe his psychologist (Bob Rotella) has a name for it. Maybe flow state, peak experience, the zone. Or, more simply, dreamstate. A golfer in a dreamstate. Anybody in a dreamstate. We all get there, now and again. Maybe you once rattled off four straight pars. For a minute there, you think you have something in your hand. These moments show up in golf, as they show up most everywhere. Maybe you have heard Bruce Springsteen, last month at the Target Center in Minneapolis, singing the Prince anthem, “Purple Rain.” At the 5:20 mark, he offers a full-throated something. Who-who wa-hoo, who-who wa-hoo. The band is with him, the backup singers are with him, the house is with him. And that’s how we are with Rory. There’s something about him. All the while we know: the moment comes and the moment goes. McIlroy was hitting every note for two days, and then he wasn’t.
The Masters. The best three-act play on the world’s sporting stage. Thursday-Friday. Saturday. Sunday. The stage. The players upon it. McIlroy made a double on the par-3 fourth, to fall to 10 under. He had one major thing going for him: 14 holes to right the ship.
HE GOES ABOUT HIS BUSINESS in a most engaging way. He stopped to look at leaderboards to see how he was doing against the field — and to see how his mate Shane Lowry was doing. “I was looking at Shane’s score because if I didn’t win today, I wish I would have been putting the green jacket on him,” he said. Looking at Shane’s scores, looking at other scores. “I know that doesn’t serve me,” he said. And yet he does it.
The bogey he made to win was equal parts terrible and great. His tee shot was so bad, so far right, it was almost OK. As he stood beside his ball and his bag, as his caddie Harry Diamond scoped out the scene, his chest was heaving and his lips were parched. He smashed an uphill hooking 8-iron that went maybe 160 yards and finished in the front left trap. (That’s a lot of territory to cover.) His bunker shot, chunky and runny, left him with a 12-footer for par. His winning putt was a six-incher his daughter could have made.
“I said to myself on 17 tee, ‘I need four good swings,’” McIlroy said. “I made one.”
That daughter, Poppy, is 5. In the awards presentation, the first people McIlroy thanked, in a long list of them, were his wife, Erica, and their daughter. He said the Masters was her favorite week of the year, because of the opportunity to caddie in the Wednesday par-3 event and because of the unlimited ice cream opportunities in family dining. She put her hands to her face. It was like time stopped. Big Jack won back-to-back. Sir Nick won back-to-back. Tiger won back-to-back. Now it’s a foursome. This seems good. We could all use some good, no matter how long it might last.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com
