Gavin Cooney reports from Augusta National Golf Club

FROM LAST YEAR through to Friday night you would assume that this was going to be the opposite of last year’s white-knuckle, tear-strained odyssey to the Green Jacket but you must always remember that when it comes to Rory McIlroy that assumption is the mother of all error. 

Let’s begin with our final mistake: we assumed that there were no more tears left to cry on Augusta’s 18th green, but when he let his par putt slide just by and left himself a tap-in for a second-straight jacket, he dropped to his haunches and realised tears were leaking from his eyes. Perhaps it was the presence of his parents, wife and daughter by the green; perhaps it was simply the realisation he had once again navigated the Rory McIlroy Experience. 

Once the putt dropped he released another exorcising roar to the sky, this time standing on his feet. He walked away to the clubhouse puffing his cheeks and rolling his eyes and then thrust his arms to the sky; freeze the image and it looked like Rory McIlroy was undergoing his own kind of crucifixion. And this one needed its own kind of Sunday resurrection. 

Friday’s six-shot lead was winnowed to nothing on Saturday and he decided discretion was the better part of valour on the first tee today, clubbing down to three-wood to finally find a fairway. He made par but could then only par the second as playing partner Cameron Young made birdie, suddenly standing on the third tee having slipped off the lead for the first time, just as happened last year. Again McIlroy made birdie on the third but on the par-three fourth things sharply diverted from the final round we all remember. 

The dreaded left miss with his irons returned and so he needed to chip back to the flag, which he did with sufficient aplomb for many of the legions standing behind him to trust in him and race ahead to get a good perch down the fifth fairway. Assumptions lads, assumptions. 

Those same crowds find themselves standing beneath the giant scoreboard at the fifth green to see its operator relay the news: Rory had dropped back to 10-under par. It struck the huddled masses dumb; it was like stepping back in time to some solemn newsflash delivered by Walter Cronkite. He doubled it!? 

McIlroy loped down the fifth fairway looking zestless and funeral, his shoulders slumped, his gaze fixed on the grass in front of him. Cam Young made his birdie and the crowds flowed away to the sixth tee, and it was at this point, for the first time all week, that Rory McIlroy appeared lonely as he steadied himself over his par putt. He sank it. 

This was not the jaunty, free-swinging Rory we know and love and curse and reproach: his play was curiously slow; he was stepping back from putts and tee shots as the winds swirled and the leaderboard eddied. 

The iron to six mercifully didn’t go left but it did skip over the pin to the back-right, and his putt from off the green got stuck in the fringe as a tiny parable for stalled momentum. McIlroy spent much of his time on that green gazing up at the leaderboard, where Justin Rose was rolling it back by shooting up the leaderboard. McIlroy, the guy who went to bed on Friday with a historic lead, was now two shots back. 

Well done on conquering those near-two decades of ghosts around here Rory. Now, have you met these new, Gen-Z ghosts?

At this point the assumption was that McIlroy was drifting unhappily to yet another Masters disappointment. The true prize of last year’s victory is that no emotion or feeling around here is terminal, and so on the seventh hole he found his transformation. He found the middle of the fairway and made a birdie as Young made bogey to defibrilate his Sunday.

He clawed back another birdie on the par-five eighth and from there he held his nerve to the finish where the challengers took turns to shoot to orbit before detaching to splash down the leaderboard. McIlroy played Amen Corner beautifully, making par at 10 and 11 before he stood in front of the water and the treacherous 12th: if Augusta National is indeed the cathedral in the pines, then the 12th is its confession box where the world comes to snoop on the sins of the world’s best golfers. 

McIlroy approached the ball and withdrew just as the wind blew. Premier League CEO Richard Masters, following along, turned around to Gareth Southgate and puffed out his cheeks, perhaps sensing disaster. Southgate bore it with his usual understated equanimity. 

McIlroy then flighted his nine-iron to the front of the green, with the ball skipping to within a few feet. The galleries erupted; Masters roared, and Southgate calmly applauded with his usual understated equanimity. Amen Corner brought McIlroy a few cruel glimpses at Shane Lowry’s latest Sunday trial. Way over par, Lowry walked up the 13th fairway to see his name being removed from the leaderboard, his name and his challenge folded over and calmly stashed away for another year. 

He diced with more watery ignominy on 15 when his approach was thinned perilously close to the green’s sloping front, with McIlroy grimacing and shoving his arms as his ball cut through the air. He got away with it. At this point Scottie Scheffler was safely ensconced in the clubhouse and Justin Rose was running out of holes, and so just as he could again picture the seams on his green jacket, he yanked his iron to 16 left.

But from there came perhaps the signature shot, another heir to last year’s glory. Patience is the luxury of the champion, and so McIlroy showed a dead pair of hands to find the perfect touch to feather his putt down a treacherous slope to the hole. 

McIlroy's tears on the 18th green. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

“After 16 I told myself I needed four good swings coming home”, said McIlroy.”And I made…one.” That one was finding the fairway on 17, but this time around he had built a two-shot lead and so he had a buffer and the rest of us had some kind of emotional protection. 

“I think we’re gonna be okay for a playoff”, wheezed one exhausted, sun-shrivelled volunteer.

Then McIlroy left the 18th tee not knowing where his ball was. We fought the urge to double back and damn the volunteers’ assumptions.

But this time a bogey was enough to win and so we can move beyond the realm of assumption to that of cold, hard fact: Rory McIlroy is the greatest European golfer of all time and is in possession of a very rare kind of genius: one that is utterly enthralling and one that will never be taken for granted in its own time.