This has to be the year, right?
His level of performance has never be higher. For more than a decade, he has been intermittently brilliant at Augusta National. Lacking only a Masters title to complete the career Grand Slam, it has seemed only a matter of course that Rory McIlroy would join that select group -- Sarazen, Hogan, Player, Nicklaus, Woods -- to have won golf's four majors.
It's his week, right?
“This is my 11th year here,” McElroy cracked. “If I haven't figured it out by now, there’s something wrong.”
Enter laughing, but it's surely easier this month. McIlory has finished in the top 10 in every event he has entered this year and won the Players Championship. He ranks third on the tour in scoring average (69.59), 10th in greens in regulation and is the favored to win the 85th Masters at 8-1 odds. This comes after failing to win anything a year ago. Now?
“I think if anyone has been dominant, it’s been Rory in the last sort of couple of months,” Justin Rose said.
“I think it's just focusing on the small things and not living and dying with the results,” McIlroy said, “and not getting caught up in trying to play perfect golf. Sort of maybe a little more acceptance and a little bit of a change in attitude, which I think has been one of the biggest keys to how I've played for the first few months of the year.”
Just as the Masters signals the start of serious business on the PGA Tour, it is more for McIlroy. As much as he has tried, he has never finished better than fourth at Augusta His best chances to win the Masters became the most excruciating: the 80 on Sunday in 2011 that saw him drop from first to 15th; the third-round 77 in 2016 while playing partner Jordan Spieth blew by him; trailing Patrick Reed last year by one with 17 to play failing to attack, finishing six shots back.
Bottom line: After winning his four majors by 2014 at age 25, he hasn't won another in his past 16 tries.
Change in attitude? In the past four months, McIlroy has revamped almost everything about his time off the course. He has reduced golf to three P's - persistence, patient, practice - to better balance his outlook. He has changed his diet, foregoing diary products to help combat allergies. He has worked with the Central Institute for Human Performance in Jupiter, Fla., which focused on health, performance and better living. He juggles.
He has dabbled in meditation and said a 20-minute season before the last round of the Players was helpful. Pretty sure Hogan didn’t try it this way.
“Look, I'm not going to go and live with the monks for a couple months in Nepal,” he said.
He also has taken on Brad Faxon not so much as a coach but as a regular sounding board. They may work on putting, but they also just meet for coffee and talk for an hour about life.
So could this be the year? If it is, McIlroy will be using some new equipment, none of it stashed in his bag.
“It's still so early in the process,” he said. “I’m only a few months into trying to get to a point where all the thoughts that I try to have and all the three P’s that I try to practice are all natural and subconscious.
“So very early stages, but I just felt for me to live a healthier life and not just with my career but away from the golf course as well, I needed to ... I just needed some of this. I need some perspective, and I needed to separate the two lives that I have.”
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