It’s Rory McIlroy vs Bryson DeChambeau part II and this time they will be face to face on Sunday at the Masters.
It’s the PGA Tour’s great defender, or at least was, versus LIV Golf’s greatest asset. The Youtube golf swing vs the Youtube sensation.
This final group pairing evokes memories of Nick Faldo vs Greg Norman in 1996, Tiger Woods vs Phil Mickelson a few years later.
McIlroy vs Scheffler was what was being prophesied before a tee shot was hit in anger on Thursday and for a long time in round one that’s what it looked like we might be getting. But what we have been drawn up for Masters Sunday is a repeat of one of the most dramatic final rounds in modern day major championship golf from ten months ago.
Not since Tiger in his pomp in the 2000s has there been a genuine golf rivalry. Rory vs Spieth simmered for a while, even Rory vs Tiger was tipped to sparkle but Rory vs Bryson has the potential to be a major championship rivalry and it’s probably golf’s great misfortune that it can’t be more than four times a year.
Even before the final round tees off there was already a potential turning point in this tournament.
Fourteen years after he flittered away a four shot lead on Sunday at Augusta National, a certainly far more mature McIlroy than 2011 had a putt on the 54th hole to put himself in that exact position once again.
It stopped a couple of rolls short. But with DeChambeau facing bunker problems 180 yards down the fairway it seemed McIlrory’s three shot advantage would be safe enough and could still edge out to four.
But the two-time US Open champion, who really is one of the great pressure putters in the game despite all his power hitting, had other ideas. A 45-foot raker across the 18th green found the bottom of the cup, but it was more than reducing the gap from potentially four shots to two, it ramps up the pressure on McIlroy.
It puts DeChambeau into the final group alongside him and the noise and images on that green show that the crowd won’t be majorly in favour of McIlroy.
The man who once said he could pummel Augusta National into submission as a par-67 is now a fans favourite around here and ironically might need that 67 to win today.
Today is the rematch everybody wanted to see with Scottie Scheffler, Ludvig Åberg, Patrick Reed, Corey Conners, Shane Lowry, Justin Rose, Jason Day and others on the undercard but maybe too far back to gatecrash the main event.
Talk of the rematch started last night but McIlroy, his mind programmed to the tune of Bob Rotella, wasn’t getting involved.
“The big thing is not to make it a rematch and stay in my own little world,” he said after his third round. “There are a few on the leaderboard capable of making a run so I have to do what I have been doing and surround myself in my own bubble and he’ll do what he does and I just have to stay firm and stay in my own little world.”
Bryson on the other hand is relishing the task.
“It’s gonna take a lot of patience to get it done. Second, I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
Neither could we.
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