Rory McIlroy exceeded his own expectations as he defied a poor driving display to share the lead after day one of the 90th Masters at Augusta National in his bid to become just the fourth player to retain the Green Jacket.
McIlroy had to wait until the 9th for a glimpse of the short grass and hit just 36% of fairways on Thursday, ranking 85th of 91 players in the field but his ability to birdie all of the par fives was a fitting atonement as he carded a five-under 67 to sit at the summit with Sam Burns.
Par fives were key for McIlroy in last year’s grand slam win (-13 over the four rounds) and he became the first defending Masters champion to have the lead after the opening round since Jordan Spieth in 2016. Although he admitted he was nervous upon starting his round, an erratic driving display didn’t haunt him. In previous years he felt he had to be perfect to keep a round together, this year he is unburdened and probably as dangerous as he has ever been around Augusta.
His mantra not too dissimilar to Finding Nemo: Just keep swinging.
“I didn’t hit the ball very well the first seven holes, and sometimes here that would lead me to get tentative and a little guidy, and I kept swinging, just trusting that I’m going to find it eventually. So maybe that was a little bit different,” said the Holywood man who is just the sixth Masters champion to share the lead after day one.
“I didn’t try to get — you know, tee the ball down and hit fairway finders into the fairway. I just trusted that eventually I’ll start to make some good swings.”
Trust is key for McIlroy and the chasing pack should be worried if he does find his A game off the tee. After a birdie on the 2nd and a three-putt bogey on the third, he made things happen with a birdie on the par-5 8th after a gorgeous low running wood to the heart of the green. He backed that up with a birdie on 9 before three birdies in a row on 13, 14 and 15 turned a decent day into the perfect start.
“Yeah, my hope was to get off to a solid start. I feel like the way I played, 5-under sort of exceeded where I thought I would be or what I wanted to do.
“I think a fair score for me today would have been like 2-under maybe with some of the places I hit it. But again, I used my head and I didn’t — I got up-and-down when I needed to. I didn’t compound mistakes. Again, that’s just a learning curve that you have to go through around here, and I did it well today.”
It’s clear that McIlroy is playing with a champions head on. He didn’t get apprehensive when things weren’t going his way and he was rewarded for his discipline.
“I still have high expectations of myself, but my expectations are more did I make good decisions today? Was I committed? Was I trusting? It wasn’t my expectations of I’m going to go out and shoot 65 and did I do it?
“I think it took me a while to get to that point where, if I focus on the process and the little mini goals of not compounding errors, like today, hitting it in trees and trying to be a hero, making good decisions, thinking my way around the golf course, I think those are the expectations I have for myself. And if I can live up to those expectations, then the scores and the results should take care of itself.”
McIlroy and Burns hold a two shot lead over 2018 champion Patrick Reed, Jason Day and Kurt Kitayama while two-time winner and world number one Scottie Scheffler is lurking on two-under despite opening his round with a par, eagle, birdie start. Scheffler is alongside Shane Lowry, last year’s runner-up Justin Rose and two-time major winner Xander Schauffele.
Perhaps there is an Irish charm over Augusta National as Lowry’s two-under 70 capped off a fine morning for our two front runners.
Meanwhile, debutant Tom McKibbin showed signs of promise despite letting a solid effort slip late on and he was forced to settle for a three-over 75.
He had earmarked the importance of being on and around the greens and his lack of experience let him down in that regard.
Yeah, it was tough. Yeah, the golf course feels like it plays completely different than even yesterday. Yeah, the greens are firm and very fast. Yeah, some of the putts you get are just incredibly difficult, incredibly fast. Yeah, just it’s very difficult. It feels like it’s hard to make birdies but very easy to make bogeys. So overall it was an okay day. I’ll take it. Maybe a little bit of lack of experience here or there, but, yeah, overall it was okay.
“Just maybe a few of the longer putts. Knowing sort of — they’re obviously uphill and knowing you think they’re going to be slow based off the last couple and they’re not slow.
“And then a few sort of chip shots where I was sort of short right on 17. The greens are pretty firm and I didn’t expect it to sort of the check up that much. So knowing you can be more aggressive on that chip and things like that sort of might help get a couple feet closer.”
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