“PSST!” Said the man who had just climbed to the back of the gallery halfway from the 15th Fairway. “Psssst!” He said again when everyone ignored him. “Is it Rory’s ball?” No one wanted to turn away from the room, but one of the people standing in front of their heads and growled “Yup” on his shoulder.
The newcomer waited a second. “Do you think he’s going to bed?” And now someone has finally taken the lead. “It’s Rory fucks McILroy,” they said, “he doesn’t know how to go to bed.” And with that, everyone is silent again and slapped their hands on their hats while another large gust of wind was blowing.
There are times when you wonder exactly why McILroy attracts as much attention as him, since it has been more than a decade since he won a major, and seems to have lost it, which he wants most, to all the senses, a man can since he has been around this second day to Augusta National.
Everyone who loves golf love McILroy’s game. Hell, the three of Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tom Watson chose him as the man they wanted to win this week.
McILroy’s chances were supposed to be at the bottom of this 15 pond, after dropping two shots in the first round. He skipped his approach on the back of green and struck a chip that penetrated into the water. Augusta National allows you a large miss, but it is rarely so generous to offer you two. In McILroy’s life, no one won the tournament while making more than a double Bogey along the way. McILroy had just had one. And then, his mind always on the 15th, he went to three strokes on the 17th.
Dragted for another year (in this same article, by AHEM, this journalist even, among others), McILroy scares his way around the first nine Friday in a under the peer, which left him seven shots on the advance of Justin Rose. There was a lonely birdie on the 2nd part, made from an impossible position after his training came just behind a tree trunk, but nothing else inside to give you a hint of what was going to happen when he reached Amen Corner.
It all started on the 10th, where McILroy led to an iron shot that landed two feet of the spindle, for a sapper. Then, in the 11th, one of the most difficult holes on the route, he whistled in another at five feet and picked up a second. The gallery was with him now; When the ball went to people in Amen Corner, there were howls and applause, roaring and crying. Everyone’s attention had passed at their corner of the route, and people came from the 5th and 7th and 17th to reach the crowd.
At 13, McILroy led into the pine straw at the front edge of the Bosthe in the exterior turn of the dog’s leg. From there, it was 190 meters at the front of green.
“It was not even a decision to go there or not,” said McILroy afterwards. And then at the minute he hit him, he said to himself: “” You silly, what did you do? “” Well, it turned out that what he had done was a landing just at the top of the shore and, Glory Be, set up an eagle putt, which he made from nine feet. Then he saved equally with a corner out of 14, which was perhaps the best batch, deeply in the trees, through a pack of customers, high at the back of the green, at 17 feet after the pin. What brings us back to the place where we started, the 15th Fairway.
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The two men playing with McILroy, Ludvig Åberg and Akshay Bhatia, both decided to go to bed. Bhatia thought of trying green, but decided not to do it at the last minute. McILroy, however, did not think. “I can’t watch,” said someone in the gallery. “If he looks at the side after he hit him, I go away,” said another. McILroy settled, swarmed, and the ball was at the top in the bright blue sky, through the pond, and in the right right corner of green, where he landed with a flop, just at the top of the slope to the water, and stopped at 85 feet less from the hole.
“It was a bit touched and left,” admitted McILroy, “even where the ball finished in a way on the slope, I thought I was running to mark him to make sure he was not going to take the hill.”
He rushed and made a LAGT putt to install his fourth Birdie de la Ronde, to go with this eagle on the 13th. This meant that he marked 31 on the nine seconds, for six under 66 which postponed him the classification. Whatever you read, heard or said, Friday morning, he is in the running in the weekend.
“I don’t think I have proven anything. If anything, I just supported the belief I have in me,” said McILroy. “I’m as resilient as anyone else here.” And much more daring, in addition.
