Burden and Opportunity

If not now, when for McIlroy?

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If Rory McIlroy can get it done today at the Masters to complete the career Grand Slam, it will have been the work of body and mind.

Will his booming drives—a 21^st century, modern tech-assisted version of Greg Norman’s persimmon-and-steel beauties of the 1980s and ’90s—find enough of Augusta National’s emerald fairways?

Will McIlroy have command of his iron play the way he did at a crucial spot late Saturday afternoon, when on the 15^th hole he rocket-launched a 6-iron and watched it land as if on a bean-bag chair?

Will the putter be there when it must be, on the dicey short ones that he missed late in the 2024 U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2?

Will the good counsel from Bob Rotella and memories of all the good stuff he has achieved over the course of a fantastic career override any mental gremlins of what happened to him on Sunday in Augusta in 2011 (awful back nine), or St. Andrews in 2022 (putter colder than the North Sea) or 10 months ago in North Carolina (lead squandered over final four holes)?

This is a delicious day for anyone who cares about golf, who relishes when it’s star v. star head-to-head in an event for much more than FedEx Cup points, who wants to see a sporting someone have a chance to get King Kong, er, a monkey, off his or her back.

If not now for Rory, when?

The 89^th Masters is the 39^th major McIlroy has played since he won the 2014 PGA Championship in the post-dusk at Valhalla Golf Club. He was 25 then and is 35 now, with a birthday around a near bend. This is his 11^th chance to complete the career Grand Slam, and it comes on his 17^th appearance in the Masters. If McIlroy is able to win later today, only Sergio Garcia, who in 2017 won in his 19^th Augusta appearance, will have taken longer.

Others have had longer gaps between major victories, but it’s been 10-plus years for McIlroy. The curls are gone and the gray has arrived. He’s older, ostensibly wiser, and with two wins this season to boost his career PGA Tour haul to 28 victories, physically seems in full flight. There is so much to admire.

It will be a test—of the physical, the mental, the emotional. Even keel might be a winning strategy, but flat is a loser. McIlroy has talked about staying in his “bubble.” DeChambeau will be on its periphery, bashing drives of his own, encouraging a growing legion of fans who like him. If DeChambeau mounts a successful comeback from the two-stroke deficit he tees off with, it will give him wins at Winged Foot, Pinehurst and Augusta. A lot of people would be satisfied with that haul for a career. DeChambeau is 31, with many opportunities ahead, unless he wears out filming all that internet content.

This is a grand chance for DeChambeau, but it’s greater than that for McIlroy as he tries to join Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods in winning all four of the modern majors in men’s golf. And here is where the rub comes. Player, Nicklaus and Woods were each in their 20s when they completed their Slams, doing so before they had tried and failed many times in the missing link. Sarazen was 33 when he won the Masters in 1935, but that was well before there was a consensus that Bobby Jones’ invitational could be considered as important as the Opens of the United States and Great Britain. When Hogan won The Open in 1953, the stir was that he’d won a “Triple Crown” of majors in one season, not that he had completed a career sweep of the big ones.

McIlroy would be the first to complete the career Grand Slam in his mid-30s, after a number of attempts, while under the scrutiny of the current media and social media worlds. The closest parallel would be the experiences of players who came up a rung short, who won three of the four big ones, most notably Sam Snead and Phil Mickelson, who endured heartache at the U.S. Open and Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson, who lacked the PGA Championship.

There are ways in which McIlroy recalls Palmer, in how the fans love him and how he treats people, in how his play, while great, displays a vulnerability. But Rory surely would love to separate himself from Palmer by finding a way to catch the whale in a way Palmer couldn’t.

McIlroy bounced back wonderfully from a stunningly lousy finish to his first round, which was marred by a pair of double bogeys. He has shot 66-66 since, and his start of six straight 3s Saturday was a Masters first and proof of what full-flight Rory can achieve. It has put him in an ideal position to cement his place in golf history, to join very select company. With 18 fine holes today, barring extreme plot twists from those in proximity on the leader board, the burden of a decade can become an opportunity seized. Win or lose, Rory is the story.