IF SISYPHUS WAS to relocate to the slopes of Augusta National, he’d laugh at the size of the small, white pockmarked rock Rory McIlroy is still pushing.
But maybe there are hidden forces making McIlroy’s heave seem so brutally beyond him.
This was another opening day of sweaty, rigid, and hesitant toil for McIlroy at the Masters, signing for an even-par 72 that leaves him in a tie for 37th place and lagging seven shots behind the leading trio of Viktor Hovland, Jon Rahm, and Brooks Koepka.
“I missed a couple of tee shots left on seven and I got penalised for an untidy bogey on three, a three-putt on 11″, he reflected afterwards. “So just stuff like that that’s not disastrous, but I just need to tidy it all up.
“I didn’t feel like I was too far away today. I made five birdies but just a couple of too many mistakes on the card.”
He isn’t dead yet but history suggests that this epic quest for the Grand Slam will go on for at least another year. Only Nick Faldo (1990) and Tiger Woods (2005) have won the Masters from a first-day deficit of this size.
As McIlroy himself acknowledged on Tuesday, he needed a fast start today, as Augusta is no course around which to go chasing. The stats bear it out, given that 23 of the last 25 winners of the Masters have been in the top 10 after round one. McIlroy now isn’t in the top 30.
Plus, all of Scottie Scheffler, Collin Morikawa, Shane Lowry, Jordan Spieth, Cameron Young, Xander Schauffele, Jason Day, Cam Smith, and Justin Thomas separate McIlroy from the leading trio, so he is battling a malign alliance of a big deficit and extraordinary competition.
The sticky, brooding air and sprinkles of rain softened and slowed the greens, but whereas many of McIlroy’s peers made the most of conditions, he did not.
There was no concentrated or operatic collapse out there, but instead a painful accrual of too many imprecisions. He birdied the second hole and then instantly gave the shot back with a bogey on the third, his chip onto the green catching the wrong side of the sloping front and rolling away. He hooked his drive on the seventh tee left and then missed a mid-range putt to card a double-bogey.
By the time he got to the eighth green he took a long, inquisitive look at the leaderboard looming above him: it told him he was already nine shots behind Hovland and Rahm. He made birdie and then did so again on 10, only to lose a shot on 11. Here he got slightly unlucky: his second shot to the green clipped a tree, and while the ball didn’t take a dip in Rae’s Creek, it sat at the foot of the front-left edge. Bogey. Thirteen was a horror: a gorgeous drive from the newly-lengthened tee begat a lousy iron into one of the back bunkers. That was bad and his attempted chip out was worse, barely making it onto the green.
There gathered another despairing sigh and thwarted glare on a day full of them.
What can’t be questioned, though, is McIlroy’s tenacity, and so he battled back. Birdies on 15 and 16 took him back to one-under par, but then he instantly hooked his drive on 17 way left and made bogey. He ultimately had to fight to finish at level par, saving par on 18 after a mis-hit to the green.
This was actually his best opening round here since 2018, but the problem now is he isn’t just playing against himself.
Though that might be a problem too.
Consider the awesome pressure he is carrying. Only five men in the history of the game have won the career Grand Slam, and only Gene Sarazen completed the sweep at the Masters. Every year lays more sedimentary layers of longing…at what point does that become unbearable?
Consider Tiger Woods’ plainly stating on Tuesday that it is only “a matter of time” until McIlroy wins the Masters. Does that not add more pressure, too?
Consider Zadie Smith’s pithy line in her review of Jordan Peele’s Get Out, “that to be oppressed is not so much to be hated as obscenely loved.” How suffocating is the desire rolling from behind the ropes? As he walked off the eighteenth green after his final practice round on Wednesday, a patron fixed McIlroy’s eyes and said, “Win it, Rory.” It sounded less a message of support than it did a demand.
And consider then how difficult it is to spend four days playing under this pressure.
It must be awfully tempting to play with it for only one.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow”, said McIlroy of the foreboding weather forecast. “Hopefully we don’t get affected by it too much, and we can get out there and play 18 holes uninterrupted.
“I can shoot something in the mid-60s and get myself back in it.”
Perhaps he can get back into it. He has the talent, and who knows what chaos the weather might unleash.
You wouldn’t officially count him out, but you wouldn’t be expecting him to win, either.
And that fact should make tomorrow much easier.