That line might not be received too rapturously by Irish chefs striving to develop national cuisine beyond stereotypes of bacon and cabbage. But the joy with McIlroy is that even with the career Grand Slam completed, and an estimated \u00a3260m banked, he is never shy about savouring his own success. One of his favourite perks as the reigning Masters champion was playing the course last Sunday with his father Gerry, unbothered by spectators amid the silent splendour of the Georgia pines. \u201cIt was a chance, I guess, just to reminisce on the journey we\u2019ve been on,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a long way from Holywood, Northern Ireland.\u201d<\/p>\n
Returning to the scene of his unforgettable triumph is a full-circle experience for McIlroy. He arrived in Augusta 48 hours earlier than normal, purely to relish the sense of being unencumbered by expectations. Today the debate is no longer about whether he has the mental fortitude to conquer this course and become one of only six men to hold all four major titles, but about whether he can seal consecutive Masters triumphs for the first time since Tiger Woods in 2002.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of it being, \u2018Come on, Rory, you know you can do this\u2019, it\u2019s \u2018Back-to-back?\u2019 There\u2019s a real positive connotation to it, rather than, \u2018Gee, Rory, we\u2019ve been waiting a while, when are you going to get this done?\u2019 It\u2019s so nice to walk around the course and not have that hanging over me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That line might not be received too rapturously by Irish chefs striving to develop national cuisine beyond stereotypes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,11476,2623,217,101,5438,10509,56,54,55,157732],"class_list":{"0":"post-518910","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-justin-rose","10":"tag-rory-mcilroy","11":"tag-sport","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-standard","14":"tag-the-masters","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom","18":"tag-us-content"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}