– Rory doesn’t mind giving the recipe. He did so yesterday, during the press conference he gave as the very happy and outstanding leader of the Masters after 36 holes. This is a summary in our way, they are not his literal words, even if we put them in quotation marks as statements:
– “Come and practise at the Augusta National for eight, nine, ten days during the three weeks before the tournament. Hit it very hard off the tee and usually play only one ball, no mulligans, count your strokes and aim determinedly to post a score, low numbers, visiting when required the more or less spooky, more or less unfamiliar parts of the course, and accepting the challenge with sportsmanship and interest, because every shot counts, as has already been said”.
– We continue with the recipe:
“Afterwards, even if only one ball counts, that doesn’t stop you working diligently on every chip, every situation around the green and, very importantly, every putt. Finally, when the moment of truth comes, of pure competition, tee the ball up and… really hit it hard, time and again”.
– It’s worth looking at some numbers now and realising that Rory sits 90th of the 91 participants in this Masters in the fairways hit statistic (not even half: 13/28). Only Davis Riley has hit fewer (9/28), but of course the American went home with rounds of 82 and 80 in his bag, last on the leaderboard, after hitting thirty more strokes than Rory in 36 holes… In short, Riley hasn’t had a good year, although he started with an encouraging sixth place at the Sony Open in Hawaii, but he’s no pushover: he was second at the PGA last year, for example. Also in 2025, for instance, he finished 22nd in his first Masters…
– Rory, it’s also true, has more resources than most. Yesterday he mentioned in passing that there were days in these three weeks before the tournament when he would take his daughter to school over in Florida, then catch a plane, go to Augusta, play the course (hitting it very hard off the tee) and make it home in time for dinner with his wife… This part, the more ‘domestic’ one, we have not included in the recipe, but it may well help too.
– Last year Rory was already one of those who hit the fewest fairways. Of the 53 who made the cut he finished 50th in the same statistic, fairways hit, but at least he caught more than half (35/56). This year, buoyed by success, he’s taken it to the extreme. It doesn’t matter where I am if my wedges are on fire…
– Scottie Scheffler‘s plan has been different. It wasn’t so bad for him in previous editions as to change it much, although the birth of his second child prevented him from competing before the Augusta date. The thing is the World Number One is already in a spiral that sounds familiar to all of us and that doesn’t signal anything bad, but normally nothing good either: “today my game deserved a better result”, he kept repeating yesterday after carding a 74 and finishing twelve off the lead, probably with no real chance left of claiming the third green jacket. The Texan insisted that in truth he had only missed one shot, the second at the 13th hole… The reality is that he also hasn’t been very sharp in some situations around the greens, an essential condition to keep good momentum alive, especially on this course.
– Rory was once in a position almost identical to this week’s. It was when he won his first Major, the 2011 US Open at Congressional. On that occasion he was at -11 and six shots clear of the next player. He would go on to win by a comfortable eight over the runner-up. Will something similar happen again? As golf is, being so bloody, it’s likely that today, in the third round, the great Northern Irish champion will go through a tighter moment and come to feel that, indeed, not everything was done, so it’s easy enough to wait a few hours to see what scenario we’re left with for Sunday.
– He, just in case, also has the recipe clear for this weekend. Someone asked him at the press conference, very astutely, what the 2011 McIlroy, the one from Congressional, would say to the current one. And this was his answer (this time, yes, literally, the question and the answer):
– Rory, what would the Rory from Congressional advise this Rory on how to protect the lead this weekend?
– Don’t try to protect it. Go out and play freely, keep hitting the ball. That was an important lesson from the 2011 Masters to the 2011 US Open: you mustn’t be overly protective. Go out and keep playing, keep trying to make birdies, keep as much confidence and commitment as possible.
– How easily recipes are prescribed. Then you have to go and do them. Everything is a bit easier if your name is Rory McIlroy.
