Rory McILroy had already admitted that he was, against his best judgment, watching the television series Bridgerton and now, his press conference reaching his conclusion, he was asked if he read a book as his annual attempt to break his Hoodoo approaches again.
McILroy smiles. He knew that the answer was almost too good to be true. “I, for the first time for a long time, have read a novel,” he said. “I actually have a certain fiction in my life. It is a book by John Grisham, the calculation. It took a very good start.
McILroy is 35 years old now and his tortured attempt to win the most famous golf tournament of all has become one of the rites of spring. He has become one of the most famous quests in sport. Each year, we ask if it will be the year of Rory. Each year, it strives to end the curse.
Sometimes it is getting closer but each year the answer is “no”.
And so the masters, played more than 18 holes in Augusta National, a course that McILroy says that he loves more than any other, a course where time is motionless for him, has become his own version of a calculation, a quest that he must follow, a quest that has become a day of crushed hope.
The irony whirlwind around him under the brilliant sun as he practiced in the middle of the Azaleas and pines, and walked the immaculate fairways from top to the plunging slopes of Augusta.
Rory McILroy embarks on the 18th emblematic hole during his round of practice in Augusta National
McILroy says that if he could only play one golf course for the rest of his life, it would be Augusta
The 35 -year -old insists that he accepted that a long career will have moments of sorrow
This place he loves, this sacred terrain hosts the only major that he cannot conquer. Sometimes I have the impression that the weight of waiting that accumulates around him playing here is too much a burden.
“It’s just mental now, right?” Sir Nick Faldo told Telegraph this week of McILroy’s quest. “It is the battle to deal with the past. How does it manage this? What is it trying to do? Can you go back?
McILroy thinks you can. In any case, he has a good record in Augusta. He was a finalist in 2022 and has six other top 10. He led during the final round in 2011 before undergoing a dramatic calamitic collapse on the nine rear which saw him finished equally in 15th row.
Faldo spoke of the “scar fabric” that McILroy transports but the man himself, who recovered from a minor injury at the elbow suffered some time after winning the players’ championship last month, said that he had an adaptation mechanism for this. He had learned, he said, that you must be willing to have a broken heart in order to claim the greatest prices.
“I think it’s a self-service mechanism,” said McILroy. “It’s just more something where you are trying not to put 100% of yourself because of this. This happens in all horizons. At some point in someone’s life, someone does not want to fall in love because he does not want to break his heart.
“Instinctively as human beings, we sometimes hold back because of the fear of injuring ourselves, whether it is a conscious decision or a subconscious decision, and that I was doing it a little on the golf course for a few years.
“But once you have crossed this, once you have crossed these sorrows, as I call them, or disappointments, you arrive in a place where you remember what you feel and you wake up the next day and you say to yourself:” Yeah, life continues, it’s not as bad as I thought “.
“This is going through these moments, especially in recent memory, where in recent years, I have had the chance to win some of the biggest golf tournaments in the world and that has not been quite happened. But life continues. You dust off and leave. This is why I became a little more comfortable to ask everything and be somewhat vulnerable sometimes.
Scottie Scheffler in the United States is the current owner of the green jacket after his four-stroke victory
A McILroy with a fresh face led during the final round in 2011 before undergoing a collapse on the new back
Two years ago, the North Irish was a finalist and he had six top 10 in Augusta
“ During my career, I showed a lot of resilience of the reverse and I feel like I did the same thing, especially after June last year and the golf that I have played since. This is something that I am really proud of.
“When you have a long career as I had, fortunately, you learn to ride with the punches, the right moments, the bad times, knowing if you do the right job and you practice the right way, that these disappointments will meet again in good times very soon.”
And so McILroy spoke lyrically about his love of this place and spring evenings at home in Holywood, Northern Ireland, that he spent watching the masters with his father and the first time he led Magnolia Lane and how it was the chill of a life ” to make his debut in Augusta.
Now he’s ready to play masters for the 17th time. It is the only major tournament missing in its CV, the only tournament that prevents him from joining the selected group which won the Grand Slam of sport.
“People ask me,” says Mcilroy, “if you could only play one golf course for the rest of your life, what would it be? I think that walking in this place every day would be pretty cool.
Maybe this year will be the year of Rory. It is time to discover that his calculation has a happy ending.
