Rory McIlroy admits that he was afraid to have his heart broken in major championships but after experiencing more than his fair share of heartache in recent years, he is adamant that the crushing losses will turn to euphoric victories ahead of this week’s Masters.
It’s Masters week at Augusta National and whatever other storylines there are, there is always one constant: ‘will this be Rory McIlroy’s year?’ This seems like his best chance, back to world number two after two brilliant wins with arguably his ‘B’ game at Pebble Beach and TPC Sawgrass.
The Holywood man is looking for his first major title since the 2014 PGA Championship and is also looking to finally become just the sixth player to complete the career grand slam – a feat many thought he would have achieved years before.
The Masters was the site of McIlroy’s first major setback when he capitulated on the back nine here in 2011, shooting an 80 to throw away a four shot 54-hole lead before he failed to chase down Patrick Reed in the final round in 2018. The more recent years have been especially painful for McIlroy with finishes of 3rd at the Open (2022) and two runner-up finishes at the US Open, the latter at Pinehurst last year where he lost out to Bryson DeChambeau.
But yet, yet, here he is again at 35 years of age arguably playing the golf of his career. The most consistent player of his generation is ready to roll the dice.
“I think over the course of my career I think I’ve showed quite a lot of resilience from setbacks, and I feel like I’ve done the same again, especially post-June last year and the golf that I’ve played since then, and it’s something that I’m really proud of,” he said in the Masters media room after confirming that his elbow was feeling just fine after receiving treatment last week.
“Look, you have setbacks and you have disappointments, but as long as you can learn from them and move forward and try to put those learnings into practice I feel like is very, very important. I feel like I’ve showed that quite a lot over the course of my career.
“Look, when you have a long career like I have had, luckily, you sort of just learn to roll with the punches, the good times, the bad times, knowing that if you do the right work and you practice the right way, that those disappointments will turn into good times again pretty soon.”
McIroy’s record in majors was rather modest for a few years after his fourth title in 2014, missing three cuts in a row at the US Open between 2016-18, while he was also without a top-10 at the PGA Championship for the next four years.
Top-10s without truly competing to win at the Masters came as they did at the Open.
But since then, McIlroy has threatened almost every single time to win. Five top-9 finishes in a row have come at the US Open including back to back runes up finishes while there have been eight top-7s in his last twelve major appearances.
McIlroy has split the last eleven years into two portions, before covid he feels he was afraid to have his heart broken in majors and feared being out on the golf course, but since 2022 he has been putting himself in the spotlight and as a consequence has suffered more heartbreak than most golfers will in their entire career.
It’s a feeling he has gotten used to and believes his ability to embrace it is the reason why he will eventually get over the line.
“It happens in all walks of life. At a certain point in someone’s life, someone doesn’t want to fall in love because they don’t want to get their heart broken. People, I think, instinctually as human beings we hold back sometimes because of the fear of getting hurt, whether that’s a conscious decision or subconscious decision, and I think I was doing that on the golf course a little bit for a few years.
“But I think once you go through that, once you go through those heartbreaks, as I call them, or disappointments, you get to a place where you remember how it feels and you wake up the next day and you’re like, yeah, life goes on, it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be.
“It’s going through those times, especially in recent memory, where the last few years I’ve had chances to win some of the biggest golf tournaments in the world and it hasn’t quite happened. But life moves on. You dust yourself off and you go again. I think that’s why I’ve become a little more comfortable in laying everything out there and being somewhat vulnerable at times.
“I think it was after the 2019 season. I remember I’d had a great year. I’d won four times around the world. I’d won the FedExCup. I had my best statistical season ever. But I didn’t have a great season in the major championships.
“I made a commitment to myself to sort of earmark these a little bit more and to give a little bit more of myself in these weeks. And I think if you see my major record since 2020, COVID was a bit of a weird year, but 2020 up until now compared to, say, the five years previous when I won the PGA in ’14, I think you’ll see a big difference in that, and that was just sitting down and reflecting at the end of 2019 thinking that I need to approach these a little bit differently again.”
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