AUGUSTA — Green is the colour of golfing divinity, the colour of the Masters champion, and finally at the 17th attempt, the colour of Rory McIlroy.
With victory, via a play-off with Justin Rose, McIlroy became only the sixth man in history to win all four majors, his destiny fulfilled. But why did it have to be so hard?
Few in this sport have toyed with the emotions like McIlroy, especially at this cathedral, blowing a two-shot overnight lead at the first and a five-shot lead with eight to play. The walk up the 18th should have been a procession. Instead it was frated with jeopardy, requiring a snake-bite of a five-footer for victory.
Of course he missed it, forcing him back to the 18th tee and a play-off with Rose, whose 66 trampled all over the soul of the disintegrating McIlroy over a thrilling back nine. Rose hit his approach to 12 feet, McIlroy somehow gathered himself to slip the blade inside it, spinning the ball back down the slope four feet from the cup.
Rose, who holed almost everything all day, saw his putt slide agonisingly wide. McIlroy would not miss again. Down he went on all fours, the tears slowing freely. Rose did not deserve to lose, but none can say McIlroy did not deserve to win, no matter how many times he tried to throw it away.
When he went to the 15th tee, McIlroy trailed Rose by one. His second, an iron from beneath the overhanging branches, was in the context of another looming heartbreak, arguably the shot of his career, curling over the water to eight feet. He missed the putt but at least the birdie stopped the bleeding.
Up ahead Rose was about to birdie the last to draw level at 11 under par, bolting yet more tension to what was already a gripping climax. McIlroy simply had to birdie one of the last two holes. Remember what we said in the previous paragraph. Scrap that. His approach at 17 surpassed even that for chutzpah and courage, claiming the putting surface and rolling to four feet. Even he couldn’t miss that.
So to the 18th he went, once again holding the lead. The wonder is he could grip the club at all knowing what was at stake, the career-defining green jacket that eluded him so painfully 11 years ago, weighing as heavy as ever.
The entrance with Bryson DeChambeau four and a half hours earlier was redolent of a championship fight, two heavyweights contesting the Rumble in Augusta. Few could have seen the day unfolding as it did.
At the second McIlroy stumbled again, falling a shot behind, evoking 2011 vibes when a four-shot lead was not enough to save him. Remarkably, at the third he was a shot ahead and after four he led by three. When the numbers went up on the leaderboard at the entrance to the course the stunned crowd erupted, spewing wild Rory acclaim into the air like lava.
The McIlroy doubters were nodding sagely over those opening two holes, the mental fragility they believe to be a characteristic feature ignored the human element in DeChambeau. He is far from the machine some would have him be, as he showed with unforced errors.
At the fifth McIlroy was so far right in the bushes it felt like sedatives should be offered to the galleries. He appeared to have no shot until he hit it, a high, looping draw to the fringe. A graph charting their states of mind, never mind their scores, would have looked like a cross section of the Alps; up, down, up, down.
Rose made his move with birdies at 11 and 12 to draw alongside DeChambeau at nine under. A hole behind, Ludvig Aberg birdied the 10th to join them. What is that they say about the Masters starting on the back nine on Sunday? As he remarked after Saturday’s round, McIlroy knows that more than any, which perhaps fuelled his birdie at the ninth to establish a four-shot cushion with nine to play.
The 10th tee was where it all fell apart 11 years ago. The tree that diverted his ball among the wooded cabins is not longer there. Neither is the snap hook that Lee Westwood once claimed was always in young Rory’s bag. McIlroy spilt the deep blue ether with a laser drive en route to another birdie. He was freewheeling then. In the end we were all reaching for something medicinal.
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