AUGUSTA, Georgia – Welcome to a new tradition: Tuesdays with Rory.
Rory McIlroy could barely imagine such a thing one year ago. Yet he could also almost taste it, too… if that’s even possible.
On his final Tuesday before joining Georgia’s favorite circle of legends last year, McIlroy joined Justin Rose for dinner together Tuesday night at Augusta National Golf Club with a couple of club members.
Sounds pretty sweet? Not exactly. the timing was off. McIlroy drove his car up to the clubhouse circle entrance and realized that the traditional Champions Dinner was, as a former very Southern Masters pressroom security liked to say in his slow drawl, “fixin’ to commence.” It didn’t feel great, McIlroy admitted, that he could not be part of that gathering. But rules are rules. Winners only. No Masters title, no food for you. And then it got worse.
“At that specific moment, the champions were having cocktails out on the balcony,” McIlroy said. “I’m like, ‘I don’t want to valet park and get out of the car,’ they’re going to see me and it’s going to be weird.” Even McIlroy joined a roomful of media members in laughter.
“Do I go and park way over in the parking lot? Because I’m not going to park in the champions’ lot. So I had this really awkward moment.”
(Kohjiro Kinno, Courtesy Augusta National)
He doesn’t have to worry about that happening again. McIlroy earned his green jacket last year the hard way, stumbling home to fall into a playoff with Rose—OK, a little awkward after the dinner thing—and then winning it on the second extra hole to finally land his green-jacketed white whale on his 17th try and, more important, complete the Career Grand Slam to become the sixth member of golf’s most elite club. There are no slouches in that group: Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tiger Woods.
This week, McIlroy will play a Masters that feels this different in almost every way. “I would never have gotten here this early, I would have never arrived on a Saturday” he said. “I usually arrive Sunday night at the earliest, probably Monday or Monday evening.”
But he had a Champions Dinner of his own to host Tuesday night. He created a detailed menu for the affair and carefully choice the food options. You know, the usual stuff normal people eat—grilled elk sliders, yellowfin tun carpaccio, Wagyu, filet mignon and peach and ricotta flatbread. People asking McIlroy why he didn’t go more Irish with his menu. He said he told them, “Because I want to enjoy the dinner as well.” If that joke sailed over your visor: Ireland is not known for its cuisine beyond Guinness stew. And it’s even funnier when McIlroy, a Northern Ireland native, can laugh about his home.
Saturday, McIlroy was on hand to congratulate Maria Jose Marin after she won the Augusta National Women’s Amateur Championship and mingle with other competitors. Sunday morning, he stopped by the kids’ Drive, Chip & Putt Contest and that afternoon, he treated his father, Gerry, to an 18-hole round on the world’s most famous golf course. “It was special for both of us,” Rory McIlroy said. “Every time I get to play golf with my dad, it’s a blessing.”
They won the exclusive Seminole Golf Club Pro-Member tournament earlier this year, a goal they’d had for a long time. “Hopefully, that’s the most pressure I feel this year,” Rory joked. “Dad was riding me pretty hard the last few holes.”
This Masters will feel so different because for the first time, maybe he’ll be able to breathe during it. Ever since his dramatic run in 2011 when he led the Masters’ first three rounds as a 21-year-old destined for greatness and then suffered an even more dramatic meltdown on the final nine en route to a dispiriting 80, the ghosts of Augusta and the burden of what might have been have followed him. At 35 last year, he was entering the Greg Norman Zone. In other words, the possibility of him not winning a Masters, which once seemed unthinkable, got more real all the time.
You know the rest.He played a 14-hole stretch in 10 under par starting with the back nine on Saturday and went on to etch his name in Augusta-green granite despite some closing jitters and win the prize he wanted most. The pressure is off. He can enjoy, truly enjoy, the tournament now in a way he couldn’t before.
“For the past 17 years, I just could not wait for the tournament to start,” McIlroy said. “This year, I couldn’t care if the tournament never started.”
The Rory Victory Tour was already in progress when he joyfully arrived at his winner’s press conference last year, wearing green, and needled the media by asking, “What are we going to talk about next year?” The media crowd roared with laughter. They’d been forced to question Rory every April why he thought he hadn’t won yet at Augusta.
Tuesday, he was asked the obvious followup question: What are we going to talk about now? “I think the story as it relates to me is, What do I do from now onwards?” McIlroy said. “What do I still want to achieve? There’s a lot that I want to do. You think every time you achieve something or have success that you’ll be happy but then the goalposts move. And they keep nudging a little bit further and further out of reach.
“What I’ve realized is, if you can just find enjoyment in the journey, that’s the big thing. Because honestly, I felt like the career Grand Slam was my destination and I got there and then I realized it wasn’t the destination. But it is so nice to walk around the property here not have that hanging over me. It feels like a big weight off my shoulders.”
So it will be a lighter and happier Rory this week attempting to join Nicklaus, Woods and Nick Faldo as the only players to win back-to-back Masters. Whether he does or doesn’t, McIlroy already has his Slam and his coveted green jacket.
Asked if he took his prized coat to dry cleaner or a tailor in the past year, he answered, “No, I was afraid to.”
McIlroy is not afraid to win a Masters, not anymore. He’ll be reminded of that fact on a certain Tuesday every April for the rest of his life.
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