Andy Bullat Augusta
After Thursday’s travails, the world No 2 stormed back into contention with a thrilling back nine in the second round
“Psst!” said the man who’d just ambled up to the back of the gallery midway down the 15th fairway. “Psssst!” he said again when everyone ignored him. “Is that Rory’s ball?” No one wanted to turn away from the play, but one of the people standing in front cocked their head and grunted “yup” over his shoulder.
The newcomer waited a second. “Do you think he’s going to lay up?” And now someone finally did snap their head right around. “It’s Rory fucking McIlroy,” they said, “he doesn’t know how to lay up.” And with that, everyone fell quiet again, and slapped their hands down on their hats as another great gust of wind blew in.
There are times when you get to wondering exactly why McIlroy gets as much attention as he does, given that it’s been over a decade since he won a major, and seems to have lost this one, which he wants most of all, in every which way a man can since he blew that four-shot lead on the final day back in 2011. And then there are the times when he plays the way he did around the second nine at Augusta National on Friday, and you remember all over again.
Everyone who loves golf loves McIlroy’s game. Hell, all three of Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tom Watson picked him out as the man they wanted to win this week.
McIlroy’s chances were supposed to be at the bottom of that pond on 15, after he dropped two shots there in the opening round. He blew his approach over the back of the green and mis-hit a chip that skittered into the water. Augusta National allows you one big miss, but it’s rarely so generous as to gift you two. In McIlroy’s lifetime, no one has won the tournament while making more than one double bogey along the way. McIlroy had just had his one. And then, his mind still on the 15th, he went and three-putted the 17th too.
Written off for another year (in this very paper, by ahem, this very journalist, among many others), McIlroy ground his way around the first nine on Friday in one under par, which left him seven shots off Justin Rose’s lead. There was a solitary birdie on the par-five 2nd, made from an impossible position after his drive fetched up right behind a tree trunk, but nothing much else in it to give you any hint of what was going to happen when he reached Amen Corner .
It all started on the 10th, where McIlroy uncorked an iron shot that landed two-feet from the pin, for a tap-in birdie. Then, at the 11th, one of the very hardest holes on the course, he whistled in another to five feet and picked up a second. The gallery was with him now; when the ball went in people down at Amen Corner were whooping and cheering and roaring and screaming. Everyone’s attention had switched to his corner of the course, and people came striding over from the 5th and the 7th and the 17th to join the throng.
At the 13th, McIlroy drove into the pine straw at the very front edge of the copse in the outside bend of the dog leg. From there, it was 190 yards to the front of the green.
“It wasn’t even a decision to go for it or not,” said McIlroy afterwards. And then the minute he hit it he said to himself: “‘You idiot, what have you done?’” Well, it turned out what he had done was land right by the top of the bank and, glory be, set himself up an eagle putt, which he made from nine feet. Then he saved par with a wedge on 14, which was possibly the best shot of the lot, from deep into the trees, through a pack of patrons, high on to the back of the green, 17 feet past the pin. Which brings us right back to where we started, on the 15th fairway.
The two men playing with McIlroy, Ludvig Åberg and Akshay Bhatia, both decided to lay up. Bhatia thought about trying for the green, but decided against it at the last minute. McIlroy, though, didn’t give it a second thought. “I can’t watch,” whispered someone in the gallery. “If he leans down to the side after he’s hit it I’m walking away,” said another. McIlroy settled, and swung, and the ball was up and away into the bright blue sky, across the pond, and on to the far right corner of the green, where it landed with flop, right at the top of the slope to the water, and stopped 85 feet shy of the hole.
“It was a little touch and go,” McIlroy admitted, “even where the ball finished sort of on the slope, I was thinking of running to mark it to make sure it wasn’t going to run back down the hill.”
He hurried on down, and made a lag putt to set up his fourth birdie of the round, to go with that eagle on 13. It meant he scored 31 on the second nine, for a six‑under 66 that pushed him back up the leaderboard. Whatever you may have read, or heard, or said, on Friday morning, he is in contention again going into the weekend.
“I don’t think I proved anything. If anything, I just backed up the belief that I have in myself,” McIlroy said. “I’m as resilient as anyone else out here.” And a whole lot bolder, besides.
Source: Rory McIlroy back in the mix after prayers answered around Amen Corner | The Masters | The Guardian