ON EASTER WEEK, the lesson should be clear: if you need a resurrection, you better make it to Sunday.
Rory McIlroy’s trademark slow start at the Masters left him chasing a seven-shot deficit from the first tee on Friday, but ultimately haste bettered speed. He forced the issue and found that he shattered his fragile dreams, shooting a wretched, five-over 77 that will lead to a missed cut at the Masters for the third time in his career.
Stormy weather meant the second round was not completed on Friday, but with the projected cutline at two-over, all that’s left of McIlroy’s 2023 Masters challenge is the paperwork.
Given Augusta National bans its patrons from running at any point on the course, it follows that the course itself would frown upon anything as base as desperation from its golfers. And so it looked at McIlroy’s impatience with its characteristic haughty indifference.
He knew he had the benefit of the benign early conditions and so he went on the attack, ripping a beautiful drive down the first fairway. The approach shot was inches from being perfect, but caught just the wrong side of a slope and rolled away, and he settled for par.
Patrons don’t have their phones on the course so are reliant on small, manually-operated scoreboards by the greens to show the scores of the players about to play in front of them. The operators on the fourth hole today took longer than usual to display McIlroy’s score beside his name, but maybe this was a flourish of theatricality as once they did it, there was a sharp and audible intake of breath.
McIlroy: +2.
They hadn’t seen his litany of errors on the second. McIlroy landed his tee-shot into the fairway bunker, then sent an iron shot flying over the green, and then didn’t make the green from in front of the patrons. Taking bogey on the first par-five beneath the day’s friendly skies was shattering.
He kept chasing. A chip from the front of the third green rolled beyond the hole, which left him with another bogey on his card, and then he went looking for birdie with an aggressive putt on six., but took another bogey.
It was an ashen-faced, enervated McIlroy who stood on the seventh tee, from where he hooked the ball left. Another bogey.
Amen Corner was another shop of horrors. He fell the wrong side of the cut line with a bogey on 11, in spite of finding the middle of the fairway. He screwed his second shot way left and and into Rae’s Creek.
McIlroy did salvage a birdie on 13 and did the same on 15, but the latter did nothing for his mood, given it began as an eagle putt from five feet. He flighted his ball over the green on 16 and two-putted for bogey, betrayed by a putter that broadly behaved itself yesterday.
It was another utterly demoralising moment, and the streams of people following McIlroy along fairways at the start of the day thinned to a trickle. Everyone’s energy seemed low: a couple literally slept at the foot of a nearby tree as McIlroy teed off on 17. (They had mercifully awoken by the time two trees fell in that part of the course later in the afternoon.)
He spoke at the start of the week of visualising slipping on the green jacket, but he can’t possibly have imagined his final walk up the eighteenth fairway being as empty and doleful as it was today. There were a couple of plaintive, individuated cries of support from the few fans on the other side of the rope. “Keep grinding Rory”, came one, “my boy took up golf because of you.”
There was time for one, last bad shot, as McIlroy’s drive went right and nestled in the trees. He bogeyed the last to sign for a 77. This was McIlroy’s 54th round at the Masters, and only twice before has his score been worse than today’s.
He handed his golfball to a child by the eighteenth hole and walked off, eyes staring directly ahead, eager to take in as little of this verdant, manicured hell as he could.
As soon as he went to sign his ugly scorecard, the hooters wailed around the course to announce the suspension of play. Perhaps that was the one break he had all week was this. At least his agony was not played out in stages. He declined all media interviews and left, and was reportedly on a flight back to Florida before play at the Masters was suspended for a second time.
It wasn’t supposed to end this way.
It never is.