Rory McIlroy strays from Jack Nicklaus warning at Masters | Opinion
Consider Rory McIlroy’s third round at the Masters a dance on the edge of disaster. His lead is gone. All of it.
AUGUSTA, GA – Rory McIlroy finally strayed from Jack Nicklaus’ warning . He made a bleeping double bogey. Let’s leave out the profanity of the Golden Bear’s pre-tournament quote to McIlroy and give you the sanitized version: Skip the big numbers.
Avoid disasters. Well, consider McIlroy’s third round a dance on the edge of disaster. McIlroy’s lead is gone.
All six strokes of it, erased. The first man to ever lead the Masters by a half-doze strokes after 36 holes is now tied with Cameron Young atop the leaderboard at 11-under. Young teed off nearly an hour before McIlroy on this round, an indicator of how much ground he’d need to close.
Consider the gap closed. On a sunny 84-degree moving day when so many other golfers posted red, red and more red numbers, McIlroy wobbled. He’d looked unstoppable, inevitable, incredible through 36 holes, but the Masters isn’t big on invincibility.