Feted like the new Tiger with his every step of the fairways, roaring Rory reckons he won his second Masters green jacket even without his all-round A game.<\/p>\n
Despite ranking second-last in the 91-player field for driving, a misfiring McIlroy established a Masters record six-shot halfway lead before winning with the same 12-under total after shooting a ho-hum even par for the weekend.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t drive the ball great. I would say I’d give it like a B-minus,” he said after edging out fast-finishing world No.1 Scottie Scheffler by one shot.<\/p>\n
“I’d say for three days my irons were really good, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday I felt like I hit some better iron shots. Saturday was really poor. So I’d say I’d give that a B.<\/p>\n
“Then my scrambling and my short game and my putting, that’s what won me the tournament this week.<\/p>\n
“So, yeah, I’d give my short game and my putting an A-plus.”<\/p>\n
In another frightening stat for the chasing pack, McIlroy and Scheffler have now won four of the past five Masters and the world’s top two ominously went one-two on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Like Federer and Nadal in tennis, then Nadal and Djokovic and now Alcaraz and Sinner, McIlroy and Scheffler are forging a compelling new rivalry that could see the two titans turn the golf history book on its head.<\/p>\n
He may never catch Jack Nicklaus’s benchmark 18 majors or even match Tiger Woods’ 15, but an unburdened McIlroy, finally free of the shackles after ending an 11-year-wait to complete golf’s career slam, is on a mission to climb the all-time ranks.<\/p>\n
“I don’t want to put a number on it,” the 36-year-old said after joining Lee Trevino, Nick Faldo and Phil Mickelson with his sixth major triumph in Georgia.<\/p>\n
“I still have things I want to achieve. It took me 10 years to win my fifth major and then my sixth one’s come pretty soon after it – but I certainly don’t want to stop here.”<\/p>\n
Now tied for 12th all time, the Northern Irishman can join legends Harry Vardon, Bobby Jones, Gene Sarazen and Sam Snead in a share for seventh with major No.7 next month at the PGA Championship.<\/p>\n
But it will be Augusta where McIlroy can really shine.<\/p>\n
Former champion Fred Couples is tipping now that McIlroy has finally cracked the code, he might wind up with five green jackets.<\/p>\n
And as a member, McIlroy is planning to continue taking full advantage of his unlimited access to one of golf’s most exclusive clubs.<\/p>\n
He revealed during his march to the first successful Masters title defence since Woods in 2002 that for almost the past month he’d been dropping daughter Poppy off to school before flying from Florida to routinely play Augusta then dashing back home for dinner.<\/p>\n
“This place feels like my home course,” McIlroy said.<\/p>\n
“I haven’t played anywhere else in the last two or three weeks, really. So I felt prepared in that way. I felt prepared that wherever I hit it on the golf course, I sort of know what to do.<\/p>\n
“I know where to miss. I’m pretty comfortable with all the shots around the greens. It’s a good blueprint.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Feted like the new Tiger with his every step of the fairways, roaring Rory reckons he won his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-605072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}