AUGUSTA, Ga. \u2014 Since this year\u2019s Masters began, Rory McIlroy talked about playing aggressively. Playing like he has a green jacket, because, well, he does already have one. Turns out, it\u2019s a little easier to have success here when you\u2019ve got a spot in the champions’ locker room forever.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That attitude was the difference in the final round as McIlroy defended his title at the Masters, becoming just the fourth person in history to go back-to-back at Augusta National.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The chairman of the club put McIlroy\u2019s green jacket back through his arms Sunday. Members of his home club in Northern Ireland cheered. Some members of the media did the same. Why not? McIlroy has been the biggest global star in the game for more than a decade.\u00a0<\/p>\n
McIlroy, who has now won six major championships, tied Nick Faldo for the most major victories by a European with his win. And he is, for now, the greatest of his generation \u2014 as we await what Scottie Scheffler\u2019s final major total may be.\u00a0<\/p>\n
McIlroy will be in a class of his own by the time we get to the PGA Championship in a month\u2019s time. He\u2019s chasing ghosts. McIlroy\u2019s next major victory will tie him with the likes of Arnold Palmer, Gene Sarazen, and Bobby Jones.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He\u2019s in the pantheon now.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt took me 10 years to win my fifth major, and then my sixth one’s come pretty soon after it. I’m not putting a number on (how many I can win), but I certainly don’t want to stop here,\u201d McIlroy said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
McIlroy\u2019s experience around Augusta National, both on the mental side and with the kinds of shots he hit, was the key through Sunday. It\u2019s never easy. It can\u2019t be. That\u2019s why so many in the game often go their entire careers without doing it. McIlroy admitted he hadn\u2019t really played any other golf course the last two or three weeks leading into the Masters and was able to shoot scores and practice shots around greens and knew \u2014 perhaps most importantly on a week when he was second-to-last in driving accuracy amongst those who made the cut \u2014 where to miss.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI joked last week and going into this week that this place feels like my home course,\u201d McIlroy said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although he opened with a birdie on No. 3, he gave it all back and then some with a double bogey on the par-3 4th. He added another bogey on No. 6 before rallying with back-to-back birdies on Nos. 7 and 8. He gave himself a talking-to on the seventh tee after finally roasting a tee shot to the centre of the fairway, which set him up for the final stretch. He said if he didn\u2019t make those birdies he may have had to press a little bit on the back nine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
McIlroy hit a nifty, sawed-off 9-iron off the tee on No. 12 to just a few feet and converted the birdie there before adding one more on No. 13. On the iconic par 5, McIlroy was in a gully on the left side of the green but took out a putter from off the green and rolled it up to 11 feet. Smart. Stylish. Impressive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think staying aggressive and staying committed, especially on those two holes, definitely served me this week,\u201d McIlroy said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He had to hold off a hard-charging Scottie Scheffler, who shot a 4-under Sunday and had a strong chance to push McIlroy more until a few late misses left him one shot short.\u00a0<\/p>\n
McIlroy knows how hard it is to compete against \u2014 and defeat \u2014 Scheffler, the game\u2019s best player. He called him \u201crelentless\u201d earlier this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Scheffler finished at 11 under for the week and in solo second. This was just the third major championship since 1986 in which the top two finishes were the first and second-ranked players in the Official World Golf Ranking.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve competed against him for a long time, and you don’t win the amount of tournaments that he’s won out here without being pretty resilient,\u201d Scheffler said of McIlroy. \u201cHaving a six-shot lead at Augusta is never easy, and losing that is obviously something difficult. But at the end of the day, when you tee it up here on Sunday, (McIlroy is) tied for the lead to start the day and had a solid round and did what he needed to do in order to get it done.”<\/p>\n
Four different players led at one time Sunday, and at one point, McIlroy was three shots back. He held steady through the final stretch of holes before it almost all came undone on the 72nd hole. McIlroy blasted his tee shot way right and at the base of a tree. But it was just right enough that he had a window to carve his approach up the 10th fairway and into the front bunker. McIlroy blasted it out to about 25 feet and nestled it up to just inches for a closing bogey. Good enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t make it easy. I used to make it easy back in my early 20s when I was winning these things by eight shots. No, it’s just… It’s hard. It’s hard to win golf tournaments. Yeah, especially around here,\u201d McIlroy said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After last year, McIlroy continued to be asked about what\u2019s next. What happens when you achieve such a big dream \u2014 a dream that some, McIlroy said, might have been deemed outlandish.\u00a0<\/p>\n
McIlroy said Sunday that he thought winning the grand slam a year ago was the destination. And then he realized it wasn\u2019t. This win, he said with a glint in his eye, was another stop on his journey.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When you dream so big, it\u2019s just as fun to achieve them all over again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt still fits,\u201d said McIlroy of his Pantone 342 C sport coat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And now, Holywood has its sequel.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUGUSTA, Ga. \u2014 Since this year\u2019s Masters began, Rory McIlroy talked about playing aggressively. Playing like he has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-600370","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}