Birdie, birdie, birdie, birdie. Some start, Rory.
After everyone at Augusta had spent the morning wondering who could jostle into position for the green jacket, along came the defending champion, the man of last April’s emotional triumph, to remind everybody what it takes to win here.
That four-hole stretch straight out of the gate on a hot Friday lunchtime at Augusta completely changed the tone of the day. No longer did this have the feel of a cluttered leaderboard, a peloton of golfers jostling for position before the great climb of this weekend. Instead this became an outright chase, and McIlroy appears to have an extra gear.
As it turns out, it’s easier to race away from the pack when the monkey is off your back. Must be something to do with aerodynamics.
Birdie, birdie, birdie, birdie, birdie. Some finish, Rory.
McIlroy knows more than most that two rounds will not win you a major, but the way he finished his second, extending his lead to six clear shots, makes it hard to imagine another outcome this weekend. The job is only half-done, but this performance from the Ulsterman has thus far been fairly ominous for his rivals – he holds the greatest 36-hole lead in Masters history.
After a Thursday round where he felt he didn’t play that well and had needed to “just keep swinging”, he still shared the lead overnight on five-under.
How dispiriting it must be for the chasers to hear the leader saying that he had not even come close to playing his best golf yet. How demoralising to hear the defending champion say “winning a Masters makes it easier to win your second one”, when you’ve never had the privilege of attending a champions dinner.
In the end, the one player who had demonstrated a capacity to keep pace with McIlroy and shown flickers of championship-level golf was another former champion, 2018 winner Patrick Reed.
Three-under overnight, a bogey-free round on Friday threatened to make this a two-horse race. Then a bogey arrived on 18 to set him back, and McIlroy caught fire with five birdies on the spin. Reed is still second, he’s just so, so far back from a man who is playing with the fluidity and tranquility of a champion.
Closest to McIlroy along with Reed is another American, Sam Burns, who wobbled through Amen corner but recovered to give himself a chance.
The next wave of pretenders all hail from the British Isles: Justin Rose, Tommy Fleetwood and McIlroy’s great friend Shane Lowry. Any of those hauling themselves into a tussle with their Ryder Cup teammate would make for appointment viewing on Sunday night.
Another shot back from them lies some quality too; Jason Day, Haotong Li, Wyndham Clark and Englishman Tyrell Hatton, who had posted the best round of the tournament with a 66 – until McIlroy’s 65 – that gives him an outside chance.
It’s a talented group, but the mountain they have to climb is so steep, and so unforgiving. Indeed, it appears as if McIlroy would have to endure one of the collapses that came to characterise his great, eleven-year wait to complete golf’s grand slam. That Rory may well be gone forever.
The Ulsterman now has a calmness about his game but also a relentlessness that the greats all possess. His focus now is on catching those who are considered the best to ever tee up a golf ball, to graduate from being in an already very exclusive club to the Mount Olympus of modern sport, where you go from having your name engraved on trophies to having tournaments named after you and statues built in your image.
While the pack spend this weekend chasing McIlroy, he will in turn be chasing greatness.
