Rory McIroy takes circuitous route to repeat Masters win: 'I don’t make it easy'
Rory McIlroy was the rare Masters champion who, with just one hole to play, a few minutes from victory, is wondering where his tee shot has landed.
AUGUSTA, GA — It is the rare Masters champion who, with just one hole to play, only a few minutes from victory, is wondering where in the world his tee shot has landed. “Walking off the 18th tee not knowing where my ball was, I think that was the moment of greatest stress. It could go anywhere.
It could be anywhere. ” With those words, Rory McIlroy appropriately described the twists and turns of his unique path to glory, one that saw an historic six-shot lead at the halfway point of the Masters evaporate into a three-shot deficit in its final round before McIlroy regained some semblance of control with nearly a half dozen worthy competitors giving chase. So there McIlroy stood on the 18th tee with a rather comfortable two-stroke lead, watching his tee shot fly so far from where it was supposed to go that it ended up closer to the wrong fairway, the 10th, than the one he was aiming for, the 18th.
“I don’t make it easy,” McIlroy said later. And that’s when he wondered if it might be “in a really bad spot or behind a tree,” he said. “I was just hoping that I had a swing.
” It turned out that he did. In fact, it was fitting that McIlroy’s grand plan to clinch his second consecutive Masters title was something that could have been hatched in a sports movie. He launched a towering 8-iron over not only a menacing tree but even the scoreboard on the 18th green, landing it, well — no one was exactly sure where.