The absence of Rory McILroy from the list of masters of masters resembles an aberration, writes Oliver Holt – The answer lies in the wisdom of Bobby Jones

On the first floor of the clubhouse in Augusta National, an old planting house which claims to be the most beautiful building in all sport, Sir Nick Faldo, dressed in his green jacket, was seated at his favorite table in a corner of the veranda which looks at the first tee.

Inside, in the library which had welcomed the champions dinner for 32 former winners on Tuesday evening and where a bottle of £ 1,200 reserve of the Pappy van Winkle family had been opened, the members entertained their guests during breakfast, where the French toast and the southern grains compete for the menu.

And in a case of glass on the wall behind them, a copy of the annual golf review of 1932 illustrated is open in a two-page article written under the line of the line of Robert T Jones JNR, better known as Bobby Jones, the founder of Augusta National and the co-founder of the Masters.

The title of his article was “the ideal golf course” and Jones therefore started: “Almost all Golfers cherish an unusual inclination for a particular golf course. Even when he does not stop to find the reason, he admits that he can get more pleasure by playing one lesson than another.

The Augusta clubhouse, with its small telephone booth on the ground floor, opposite the huge tournament trophy which is a model of money from the building, and its photos of each former winner in the corridor, is a magical place that breathes the history and tradition of each pore.

The first time I set foot there, I went down the narrow and spiral staircase from the library, aware that two older gentlemen were waiting for me so that I could pass – it was Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.

The continuous absence of McILroy of the photo of the champions of the masters resembles an aberration

It seems a matter of time for McILroy to join the club, but sport does not always work in this way

It is the richness of the tradition that you feel here, the fact that it is the only major that takes place in the same course each year, which motivates so much superstars like Rory McILroy to want to be part.

The Masters is, of course, the last Grand Prix to escape McILroy, the only Golf Golf Territories that he has not conquered, the only omission that will haunt him if he reaches the end of his career without winning it.

When the Masters published a photo of all the former winners during the Champions dinner and McILroy was not in the middle of the radiant faces in the camera, this brought him home, as is the case every year, that it looks like an aberration that he did not triumph here.

Many of his rivals were in this image, so many men that he is constantly above the world ranking and a few players, who are not able to reach the levels that McILroy reaches, that it seems that it can only be a matter of time until he is right and joins the club. But sport does not always work this way.

More foreign, he believes that McILroy has not won, the more his drought takes place, the more the End of this dryness task becomes and the more she begins to weigh on him.

On Tuesday, he talked about the way it was his favorite course, the way he could play here every day of his life.

This is the place for which he cherishes an “unusual inclination”. It makes the pressure to try to win here even more overwhelming.

Perhaps everything comes back to the wisdom of Bobby Jones, the man whose article rests in this showcase in the library of the clubhouse.

“You balance your best when you have the least to think,” wrote Jones. “The purpose of the golf is to beat someone. Make sure someone is not yourself.