McIlroy skirts disaster, becomes a Master

He finishes the career Grand Slam on a breathtaking Sunday at Augusta National

McIlroy after the winning putt

Over the past 11 years, great golf had never worked for Rory McIlroy.

Twenty-one times since 2014, he had finished in the top ten at a major championship. Seven times, he was in the top three. The photo finishes became crueler as McIlroy entered his mid-30s, with losses to Wyndham Clark and Bryson DeChambeau in the past two U.S. Opens, to Cameron Smith in the Open Championship at St. Andrews when McIlroy cleaved nearly every fairway and green. There was dwindling nobility in all these valiant failures. McIlroy turns 36 next month. To win his fifth major, much less the Masters and thus the career Grand Slam, he had to find another level.

He found it Sunday. It was a lower level. It was not great golf. Well, at times it was, but mostly it was just weird. Justin Rose was the one who played great golf, with 10 birdies and a 66. He eventually learned how little it guarantees.

McIlroy hit one fairway in his first eight holes Sunday. He double bogeyed his first hole. When he led by four strokes and appeared ready to swallow the 13th hole and the rest of the Masters field with it, he made another double bogey, the fourth of his Masters week, and no one had ever won a Masters doing that.

Eventually he had to make par on 18 to win in regulation, and he dumped an inglorious wedge into a bunker and then pulled a six-footer for bogey. He now faced a playoff with Rose, who had been hitting balls a few hundred yards away. Vultures were circling, looking for any remaining pieces of McIlroy’s heart.

McIlroy left the scoring tent and found the cart that would take he and his caddie, boyhood friend Harry Diamond, to the 18th tee. “Well, pal, we would have taken this on Monday morning,” Diamond told him. McIlroy agreed. His mind cleansed, McIlroy bombed his drive, then watched Rose’s iron shot came to rest 19 feet above the cup. McIlroy then reached back for his best fastball and put his shot to within four feet.

Rose missed his putt to the right. McIlroy rolled his in. He had won this rambling wreck of a Masters, and he raised his arms and let go of the putter, and then he hit the ground before the putter did, rocked by his own tears and the accumulated disarray of the years.

“That was 11 years or maybe 14 years of pent-up emotion,” he said later. “It was all relief. I’ve carried this burden since August of 2014.”

The overall clumsiness was more than replaced by the jagged twists, the changes of fortune and the humanity of it all. Forget David Loggins’ flowery lyrics and, for that matter, all the flowers themselves. This Masters highlight film should be French Connection. It was a series of chase scenes, and McIlroy was both the pursuer and the prey.

If you’ll remember, McIlroy came to the golf course with a 2-shot lead over DeChambeau, and those two were supposed to determine the direction of the modern game as we know it. McIlroy, agonizingly nervous, drove into a bunker and made double, and DeChambeau went par-birdie and led as they went to the No. 3 tee. McIlroy then came up with a clever approach shot that he said was as significant as any of his other shots, and he birdied 3 and 4 and was suddenly three shots clear of DeChambeau, who never got settled and shot 75. And when McIlroy came to the par-five 13th, he was four ahead of his partner and five ahead of Rose, who was infuriated on Saturday when he shot 75 but was now free-wheeling it, three holes ahead of Mcilroy.

McIlroy had 238 yards to the green on his second shot and chose to lay up. Smart golf, right? Yeah, if you don’t bloop your third shot into Rae’s Creek and then blow a bogey putt. Rose birdied the 15th and 16th and suddenly led by one shot, with Ludvig Aberg tied with McIlroy, who then missed an 8-footer for par on 14.

But twice coming in, McIlroy stepped aside and let his gifts take the wheel. Only a handful of human beings have ever been good enough to guide that 207-yard 7-iron around trees on 15, setting up a 7-foot eagle putt, which McIlroy missed. And on 17 McIlroy nailed another iron shot to within two feet and did make that.

“My battle today was with myself,” McIlroy said. “It wasn’t with anyone else. Justin was there at the end, but my battle was with my mind.”

Rose, 44, has shed a lot of blood here himself. This is his third runnerup finish at the Masters. Eight years ago he had a shortish putt to beat Sergio Garcia in a playoff, but missed it and eventually lost. The only downside of Sunday is the realization that Rose will never get full marks for the fourth round that he played. It was among the best in Masters history.

“Something happened in the middle of the round that took me to the place where you always dream about going to,” said Rose, who only had four pars on Sunday. “It was probably a bogey away (on 17) from being the greatest round I ever played. There’s no use being despondent about it. You can’t skip through a career without a little bit of heartache. You have to risk feeling this way to get the reverse.”

Of the 53 players who made the cut and played Sunday, McIlroy ranked 48th in strokes gained/putting, and 37th off the tee. On Sunday he only made 64 feet of putts, and for the week he ranked 48th in putting. But he was first in approach shots, the most important shots at Augusta. He made egregious mistakes and he got some breaks. “I rode my luck all week, but maybe after all the things that have happened, I deserved it,” he said brightly.

He left strokes all over the premises, although they were quickly gathered up and placed in receptacles, of course. He only won because of isolated outbreaks of genius, and a stony refusal to stop competing, to surrender to ghostly jinxes. He also was carried by a crowd that considers him its favorite foreign son. These are the same fans that watched him shoot a tearful 80 here, 14 years ago, when he had also led by four shots. They noticed how he turned around and won his next major, the 2011 U.S. Open, in record fashion. They followed him when he won those first four majors in a 3-year span. He now has five, and the next one is the PGA at Charlotte’s Quail Hollow, where he has won four times before. But through it all, his honesty and decency has won over the public, captured their emotions the way Scottie Scheffler hasn’t yet. Nothing is more endearing to fans than a player who can put away the pain and stick out his chin one more time.

And when it was over, McIlroy didn’t pretend he didn’t know the narrative. “Let me ask a question,” he said when he got to the press building. “What are we going to talk about next year?”

He laughed away a few more years of buried stress. No, we’ll have plenty to talk about next year and the year after that, and for as many years as we’re able to remember the day McIlroy thought he’d finally won his first Masters, and then learned he had to win it again and again, and did so.