Rory McIlroy’s Tuesday press conference has become a modern-day Masters tradition, his annual attempt to explain exactly how he’s planning to go about finally winning the thing that fits right in alongside the par-three contest, the pimento cheese sandwiches, and watching the players try to skip the ball across the water during the practice rounds. In the 13 years since McIlroy blew a four-shot lead here on the Sunday in 2011, he seems to have tried it every which way, fat and thin, zoned out and dialled in.
There were years when he played the course over and over before the tournament, years when he hardly stopped here at all, years when he talked up how much it meant, and years when he played it down. “Yeah,” McIlroy said himself this year. “This is my 16th start in the Masters, so I feel like I’ve done it quite a few different ways.”
This time around, McIlroy says, he wants “to bring a little bit of normalcy into what I try to do. I play 25 weeks a year, and there’s no point in doing anything different this week compared to other weeks.” He came and played here a couple of times early last week, so he could get his prep work done early, and arrived for the tournament on Tuesday morning, same he does for every other event. “Now it’s just about going out there and being relaxed and being in the right frame of mind.”
McIlroy normally talks for a good 30 minutes, this year he was in and out of the press room in less than 10. He has done a lot of talking in the past few years, at last year’s Masters he entangled himself in the row between the PGA and LIV, and, whether it was coincidence or not, ended up missing the cut. It’s no surprise that this year he wants to keep his head down and concentrate on his golf rather than everyone else’s.
Fortunately for all us in the press, Tiger Woods did a little of McIlroy’s talking for him. “No question he’ll do it at some point,” Woods said, when he was asked whether he thought McIlroy would ever finish off the grand slam of all four major tournaments. “Rory’s too talented, too good, and he’s going to be playing this event for a very long time. He’ll get it done. It’s just a matter of when. Rory will be a great Masters champion one day. It could be this week, you never know, but with the talent that he has, the way he plays the game, and how the golf course fits his eye, it’s just a matter of time.”
“That’s flattering,” McIlroy said. “It’s nice to hear, the best player ever to play the game, in my opinion, say something like that. But does that mean that it’s going to happen? Obviously not. But he’s been around the game long enough to know that I at least have the potential to do it. But I know I’ve got the potential to do it too.” So does everyone else, as he says, “it’s not as if I haven’t been a pretty good player for the last couple of decades.” The bit nobody knows, not even Woods, is whether he ever actually will.
There were a couple of hints of how he’s planning to go about it this time around. He’s been working with Woods’ former coach Butch Harmon. “We probably text on a daily basis,” McIlroy said, “he’s part sort of psychologist, part swing coach. You spend four hours with Butch and you go away with two swing tips and 30 stories, but you always go away hitting the ball better than when you came.” Technically, the two of them have been working on his approach game, but it was revealing, too, that he said how good it was to have Harmon’s blessing. “I think that’s nice validation as well.”
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You would think four major titles and 38 professional victories would be all the validation McIlroy needs, but here we are. Otherwise, McIlroy’s plan is to take it slow, and try to enjoy himself. “If I cast my mind back to 18-year-old Rory driving down Magnolia Lane for the first time, how did I feel, and I think you have to try to go back to just be grateful that you can be a part of this tournament, and that you get to compete in it every year.
“Thankfully, I’ve improved a bit since my first start here, and I feel like I’ve got all the tools to do well this week. But, again, I think one of the most important things is to enjoy it and smell the – I guess not the roses – the azaleas along the way.”