{"id":522077,"date":"2026-04-09T20:26:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T20:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/522077\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T20:26:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T20:26:12","slug":"masters-live-rory-mcilroy-begins-charge-up-leaderboard-as-major-champ-kicked-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/522077\/","title":{"rendered":"Masters LIVE: Rory McIlroy begins charge up leaderboard as major champ kicked out"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \" data-tmdatatrack=\"content-unit\" data-tmdatatrack-type=\"paragraph\">The <a aria-label=\"\" class=\"TextLink_text-link__dBSS0 TextLink_enabled__dJF3l\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/all-about\/the-masters\" rel=\"follow nofollow noopener\" tabindex=\"0\" target=\"_self\">2026 Masters<\/a> will get underway on Thursday afternoon. <a aria-label=\"\" class=\"TextLink_text-link__dBSS0 TextLink_enabled__dJF3l\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/all-about\/rory-mcilroy\" rel=\"follow nofollow noopener\" tabindex=\"0\" target=\"_self\">Rory McIlroy<\/a> is set to begin his defence of the green jacket when he tees off at around 3:30pm BST (10:30am EDT). As the reigning champion, McIlroy will play alongside Cameron Young, the Players winner, and US Amateur Mason Howell.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \" data-tmdatatrack=\"content-unit\" data-tmdatatrack-type=\"paragraph\">Despite lifting the famous trophy 12 months ago, the Northern Irishman is joint third-favourite to win this year&#8217;s tournament at 14\/1 behind Scottie Scheffler (25\/4) and Jon Rahm (12\/1) and alongside Bryson DeChambeau (14\/1). Golf fans are anticipating to see if McIlroy can relive his glory in 2025, where he pipped Justin Rose to come out on top following a tense play-off on the 18th hole.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \" data-tmdatatrack=\"content-unit\" data-tmdatatrack-type=\"paragraph\">However, a field of 90 other PGA Tour, LIV Golf, DP World pros and select amateurs alike will look to upset McIlroy when the four-day event rolls into Sunday&#8217;s finale. Among the other frontrunners is Brooks Koepka (50\/1), who is taking part in his first major tournament since ditching LIV Golf in December.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \" data-tmdatatrack=\"content-unit\" data-tmdatatrack-type=\"paragraph\">Follow The Mirror live blog for all the latest from the Masters at Augusta National&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 Masters will get underway on Thursday afternoon. Rory McIlroy is set to begin his defence of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5904,49,76309,50,2623,10509,8937,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-522077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-masters-tournament","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-rory-mcilroy","13":"tag-the-masters","14":"tag-tiger-woods","15":"tag-top-news","16":"tag-top-stories","17":"tag-topnews","18":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522077","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=522077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}