One of the great rounds of the tangled love story of Rory McILroy with Augusta National played a beautiful Friday afternoon in Georgia, as often do the big days of this sport, like a battle between a total shine and a total chaos.
Once you know that McILroy started his round condemned as a non-hover, rejected as a case of Vanail which would never win the masters because he wants it too much, and put it an end to the head after having pulled an amazing six under 66, it is just to suppose that the Total Brilliant won the day.
The soap opera started shortly after 10 a.m. The cold in the air that praised the first runners had started to fade when McILroy rose on the TEE at 575 yards, in five seconds and looked at the Fairway which dives downhill before bending towards the left.
Matt Fitzpatrick had taken the hole a few minutes earlier and McILroy knew that after the disasters of the previous evening, when he had dropped four shots in the last four holes of his first round, he needed a quick start to recover his last inclination to the only major he never won.
A bird has tripled with shine as it embarked on this easy and elegant swing which is prevented from violence of an explosion and its ball moved away from its club face. The marshals behind him showed the right while his ball was heading towards some of the pink dogs that give the hole his name. And now, the hole has started to transform into one of these wonderful dramas that define the mixture of anarchy, chance and genius that golf can become.
McILroy’s ball has rested in a pine straw alongside a small truck which was a mechanical platform for one of these raised television cameras which are a characteristic of major golf tournaments.
Rory McILroy relaunched his attempt to finish the Grand Colem in career and win the Masters on Friday
The Northern Irishman had a disastrous end to the procedures in the last holes on the first day
The accusation of McILroy saw him end on the second day at six under the peer and the third spouse in the ranking
The platform was to be moved if McILroy had to be able to play his ball, so that the cameraman and its camera were slowly lowered by their Eyria, the platform was rolled up and the truck was preceded.
The tree trunk that blocked McILroy’s path towards green, however, could not be moved and therefore the Northern Irishman hung his ball on the fairway as best he could and he came by salient and slipping and rushing to the place where a group of us was held on the other side of the fairway.
McILroy moved and looked at the position of his ball. He leaned over to eliminate a few twigs that were nearby and asked if the gallery could go back a few meters to give it space. “Sorry guys,” he said.
He murmured a few words to his shopping cart, Harry Diamond. Diamond nodded. McILroy stood above his ball and floated a corner of the hole.
“Sit down, sit down,” McILroy ordered urgently and he obeys. He came to rest five feet from the hole.
The galleries around the hole rugged their approval and McILroy allowed himself a thin smile, his first of the day. “Atta Boy, Rors,” shouted an American boss at the top of his voice while McILroy was walking away. Another man, looking with his young son, spoke more gently. “It was worth waiting,” he said.
A few minutes later, McILroy rolled up this 5-foot putt in the hole for Birdie and the gallery again applauded in the hope that it was perhaps the start of the world n ° 2 beginning to repair the damage of the day before and fill the gap on the leaders.
It didn’t quite work like that. While Bryson Dechambeau and Ludvig Aberg moved away from Rose’s advance, McILroy remained underestimated on the first nine. The ninth himself, his approach landed a few meters from the flag, but then the rotation made him roll joyfully on the slope of the green 20 feet distance. His Birdie Putt stopped a few centimeters from the cup.
McILroy is back in the running while he has been targeting his first major victory since 2014
But then McILroy started to load. He smoked his route from the 10th T-shirt so that he attracts more admiration for the crowd gathered near the clubhouse. He sorted on 10, became the first player of the day in Birdie le 11th, then escaped a capricious tee with Rae’s Creek on 12 before the next battle between Chaos and Genius the 13th by-Five.
The journey of McILroy came to rest in the woods, but he decided to go for green anyway and broke his second out of pine straw towards green. The front of the green is protected by an tributary of Rae’s Creek, but McILroy’s ball bounced over it and came to rest nine feet from the hole.
McILroy holds wood, almost folded, laughing at the audacity for what he had just achieved and thank the stars for a chance that he had perhaps felt at this course which treated him so much sorrow. He sank the putt for the eagle. He escaped a horribly capricious driving at 14, which left him to make his way through an avenue of spectators, with a peer. And when he sorted in the 15th, where everything had heard on Thursday evening, he suddenly was two rose fire, in third place in the tournament.
When Dechambeau dropped a shot on the 16th, McILroy joined him, although briefly, in a second and sudden part, it seemed that everything was possible again. Yesterday, at least, his genius had overcome the flirtations with the chaos that cursed it here.
But today is another day. The battle between the angels and the demons who crowd around him at Augusta Rage again.
There will be more soap opera and there will be more dramas and if McILroy will end tomorrow as only the sixth player, after Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods, to finish the big slam, his genius will have to keep the top.
