It’s Masters Championship Sunday, and the leaderboard for this, the 89th playing of America’s most august sporting event could have been written by Hollywood or Shakespeare, take your pick.
Start with Rory McIlroy. He burst on the scene as a wunderkind, blossomed into a Hall of Famer, and now stands – along with Tiger Woods – as the bulwark against LIV Golf, the parvenu that intrudes upon our sport with a carnival barker frivolity, but a fat purse.
That makes McIlroy immortal. He’s doing his duty to the ethos of the game, protecting it against simoniacal influences that seek to pervert our beloved sport for their own greed and ego.
***Cough! Cough! Greg Norman! Greg Norman! Cough Cough!***
But as even tribes in the Amazon rain forest know, Arnold Palmer never won the PGA Championship, Phil Mickelson never won the U.S. Open, and Rory McIlroy has not yet won the Masters.
Not. Yet. It’s the one accolade that’s eluded him, his unclimbed Mount Everest. The last leg of the career Grand Slam. And now it is so tantalizingly close.
After three days, Rory has been the class of this Masters. He was working on a 68 on Thursday, but couldn’t get it to the house; one mis-club at 15 and one bad decision at 17 turned easy holes into – GASP! – double bogeys. And that scintillating 4-under score after 14 holes fattened into a milquetoast, disappointing even-par 72. He was seven back of England’s Justin Rose.
“It’s a good thing I have a short memory,” McIlroy quipped.
Then he went out and posted back-to-back 66s on Friday and Saturday too zoom atop the leaderboard at 12-under 204, two shots clear of LIV Golf’s Bryson DeChambeau, a two-time U.S. Open winner, and four ahead of Canada’s Corey Conners. He did it both days by hanging tough, grinding from first shot to last, and never losing focus – quintessential competitive golf. Friday’s round was bogey free, but after nine holes, Rory was still only 1-under and merely sputtering along.
But then the barrage came. Birdies at 10 and 11, and an eagle at the par-15th vaulted him to 5 under on the day. This time he didn’t falter down the stretch, added another birdie for good measure, and found himself tied for third at the halfway mark at minus-6.
Then came another carronade that reverberated throughout Georgia. Rory opened Saturday’s round with six consecutive threes on the card – including going birdie-eagle-birdie-birdie.
“Another birdie! He’s out of his mind!” shrieked a normally phlegmatic Jim Nantz, as Rory vaulted to 10 under and a three-shot lead before anyone could blink. Seasoned pro golfers were pointing at scoreboards stunned...and bemused.
It was reminiscent of two moments in golf history that are indelible. First in 1973 at the U.S. Open at Oakmont, when Johnny Miller shot his then-major championship record 63. He birdied the first four holes of the day, and then made five more between holes 9-15.
“Who the hell is 5 under,” moaned a stunned Arnold Palmer who was at or near the lead for much of Sunday before Miller ran past him like Arnie was signing autographs instead of golfing.
“Miller?” roared an equally shell-shocked Tom Weiskopf. “I didn’t even know he made the cut!”
Rory’s charge also had the feel of Jack or Tiger as well, especially Jack in 1986. You knew well – by the full-throatedness of the roars – you knew it could only have been Rory out there.
“Tomorrow in that final group is going to be -- it's going to be a little rowdy and a little loud,” Rory admitted candidly. That’s an understatement; it may break the noise records he and Michael Block set in Rochester in 2023 at the PGA Championship. Those roars blew out windows from Buffalo to Utica, so they might want to buy some ear muffs in South Carolina, Florida and Mississippi.
“I'm just going to have to settle in and really try to keep myself in my own little bubble and keep my head down and, you know, sort of approach tomorrow with the same attitude that I have tried to approach the last three days with,” Rory stated, and he’s right. It was weathering a pair of bogeys at eight and 10 that nearly derailed his round. But then he did what all the greats do: dig deep and come through in the clutch. He played the back nine par-5s in 3-under.
Still, Bryson might have Rory right where he wants him. Rory hasn’t closed in a major since his back-to-back triumphs at the 2014 Open Championship and PGA. And the close calls have been agonizing. Three times in the last three years McIlroy has had a chance to add a fifth major championship title and three times in a row, the cup was cruelly dashed from his lips. Twice the wounds were self-inflicted; his putter never got out of the trunk of his car on Sunday at both the 2022 Open Championship at St. Andrews and the 2023 U.S. Open at L.A. Country club. And last year DeChambeau stared Rory down mano-a-mano at Pinehurst.
Is Bryson Rory’s Kryptonite? Will he play Tom Watson to Rory’s Jack Nicklaus? A foil who frustrated him over and over again? Of all the golfers in the field, perhaps only Brooks Koepka has the same fearlessness, aggression, and durability as DeChambeau. Bryson’s physicality perhaps outstrips even Rory’s. Plus, he may be the smartest thinker in the field, and that plays in the clutch. He can putt the lights out; he won his U.S. Opens at Winged Foot West and Pinehurst No. 2, perhaps the most fearsome tandem of greens in America. He owns the competitive scoring record at Winged Foot. And he’s taken Rory down before.
“I think it's fun, feeling like you have to hit every single shot to the best of your ability, and you can't let off the gas pedal. You just have to focus and play the best -- absolute best golf you possibly can,” DeChambeau stated firmly, displaying the conviction of the relentless competitor he is. “When you're leading, it's a little different. I've had those times, as well. You attack that a little differently. But for me, I'll be chasing tomorrow. It will be a fun test.”
Like a lion chasing down a zebra.
And, of course, who can forget 2011, when a much younger, greener Rory blew a four-shot lead with nine holes to play at Augusta National? The press couldn’t. Someone went ahead and posed it to Rory:
QUESTION: I wonder if you can remember how you spent your Saturday night in 2011, and how you might do it differently this time around?
RORY McILROY: That was 14 years ago. I have no idea. Again, I'm glad I have a short memory. I'll have some dinner. Maybe try to make it through the second episode of the third season of "Bridgerton." Fell asleep during episode 1 last night. And that's it….Sort of put the phone away. Don't look at it. Try not to look at it until tomorrow night.”
LIV Golf’s Patrick Reed, the 2018 winner of the green jacket, and young Swedish star Ludvig Aberg are six strokes back at 6 under tied for fourth, but does anyone else matter besides McIlroy and DeChambeau? With the exception of 2020, the winner of the last eight Masters has come from the final pairing. This has the makings of Yankees-Red Sox, Celtics-Lakers, and the Thrilla-in-Manila all in one.
Meanwhile we are going to strap ourselves in, and prepare for blast off into the stratosphere. Get ready for G-Force. Corey Connors may be playing for all Canada. Ludwig Aberg may be playing for all Sweden. But the LIV golfers are playing for their wallet.
So Rory is the only choice. It should be an epic battle, but one we need Rory to win. He’s not just the best story on the scoreboard; He’s our Polestar now. He’s the one standing in the breach for golf off the course and in the boardroom, where we need our golf heroes to be real heroes. If Rory wins, then all golf wins. As it should be.
