22-year-old moves on from Masters collapse
A year later, Rory McIlroy can look back on his Masters disaster and laugh. The defining shot of his final-round collapse was a pull-hook so deep into the trees on the 10th hole that the ball finished next to a row of cabins.
On Tuesday, McIlroy was asked his impressions upon returning to the hole.
“I can’t believe how close the cabins are,” McIlroy joked. “They are only 50 yards off the tee.”
If laughter is the best cure, McIlroy’s infamous shot in his final-round 80 at Augusta National is long forgotten as he prepares for this year’s tournament, which tees off Thursday.
“To be honest, it was such a blur. It was really hard to remember,” McIlroy told reporters. “It wasn’t just the tee shot. It was way before that. It was just how I approached the whole day. I went through it a million times. Yeah, it’s something that I learned from, and I quickly forgot about and moved on and moved on pretty well.”
In his next major championship, McIlroy finished what he started, winning the U.S. Open at Congressional by eight shots. This year, the 22-year-old is off to the best start of his young career, finishing in the top five in all five of his starts on European and PGA tours. According to McIlroy, the lessons learned from last year’s Masters have him in a “great place.”
“I’m coming back here a much more experienced player and feel like a much better player than the player that came here last year,” McIlroy said. “I wasn’t ready to win the Masters, wasn’t ready to win a major. I really needed to think about what I needed to do to improve mentally and in different aspects of my game.”
The aspect that has improved the most, according to McIlroy, is his putting. He credited Dave Stockton for freeing up his stroke, allowing him to feel more natural. McIlroy ranks 67th on the tour in strokes gained putting (plus-.23). Last year his figure was minus-.13, ranking 130th.
As for the mental side, McIlroy said what he learned from Augusta was to be himself.
“I was trying to be too focused, too perfect,” McIlroy said. “That day, I felt like from watching the tape back, I was always looking at the ground. I was very insular. My shoulders were a little bit like this [hunched]. Sort of like I didn’t want the outside world to get in, instead of embracing the situation and saying, you know, I’ve got a four-shot lead at the Masters. Let’s enjoy this.”
Tiger Woods had no such moment at Augusta. When he seized the lead at the 1997 Masters, also at age 21, he extended it for a record-setting 12-shot victory, the kind of dominating win McIlroy pulled off last year at Congressional.
“It was cool to see someone learn from their mistakes like that and apply it,” Woods said. “We have all been in those situations where we’ve had one bad round. He learned from it, applied it, and ran away with it. That was some pretty impressive playing at the Open.”
<span style=”font-size:14px;font-weight:bold; class=” briefshedodd”=””>Notes
» Dustin Johnson withdrew on Tuesday. Johnson, ranked No. 12 in the world, has had back problems since undergoing off-season knee surgery
» Woods will tee off at 10:35 on Thursday, plying with Miguel Angel Jimenez and PGA Tour rookie Sang-Moon Bae.
» Phil Mickelson will tee off in the final group at 1:53 p.m., playing with Peter Hanson and Hunter Mahan. McIlroy is in the group ahead (1:42 p.m.) playing with Bubba Watson and Angel Cabrera.
