Butch Harmon isn’t one for sitting on fences. So there was little dithering, none in fact, when we chatted on Wednesday evening about the Masters and his prediction for the coming week.
‘Rory McIlroy is the outright favourite,’ he said, and as the best-known coach in golf, he is aware his thoughts have some resonance.
He is also conscious that putting your money on McIlroy in these parts is a venture which warrants caution. They make a big play of their history at Augusta and McIlroy could write a book about his.
But here we are, gifted an opportunity to repurpose one of the finest lines delivered in a sporting context. That would be the comment from Vitas Gerulaitis in 1980, spoken after he had finally broken an unfortunate streak of defeats by Jimmy Connors on the tennis court: ‘And let that be a lesson to you all. Nobody beats Vitas Gerulaitis 17 times in a row.’
This will be McIlroy’s 17th visit to Augusta, his 14th since the great collapse of 2011, and his 11th since he won The Open in 2014, thus going three quarters of the way to becoming only the sixth player in history to win all four.
We’ll soon see if Augusta can do to McIlroy what no one could do to Gerulaitis, and you might well read a forest’s worth of these pieces about his Augusta curse in the coming days. Without Tiger Woods in the picture, the unfinished works of Rory McIlroy will be the biggest talking point in town and the questions of when and why will be the loudest.
Rory McIlroy has agonisingly missed out on adding to his four major titles in recent years
It has been over a decade since he last won a major, and he has never triumphed at the Masters
Butch Harmon (pictured) believes McIlroy is the favourite to end his major drought at Augusta
But Harmon is not alone in thinking his time is now, 11 years after his fourth and most recent major win and 10 months on from the choke to end them all at the US Open.
When we spoke, there was a chunk spent dealing with the nitty-gritty – Harmon was detailing McIlroy’s better control of his wedges, the advantage of having mastered the knock-down nine iron, and a vastly improved ability to play in the wind. There is a bit forecast for next week, as it happens.
But it was also about the first prolonged glitch in the Scottie Scheffler machine since he became the latest next-Tiger and the struggles of Xander Schauffele and McIlroy’s enhanced ability to win tournaments with his B game, as he has done lately. They’ve all noticed it in golf and many believe a perfect storm could be brewing.
Harmon pivoted to a spot of imagery: ‘He’s like a horse in the starting gate at the Kentucky Derby. He wants to go, man, just turn me loose. I think if he can gear himself down a little, he will be hard to beat. It’s very easy to say, and it’s not easy to do.’
And that took us to the familiar point – the one we raise every year. ‘There’s a lot of weight put on Rory shoulders, from the press, but I don’t think that’s the pressure that bothers him anymore,’ Harmon said. ‘I think it’s the pressure he puts on himself, the fact that he wants to win this tournament so bad. He has to learn how to take a deep breath and gear his system down and let it happen. That’s a big ask. But to win, he’s going to have to figure that out.’
I remember watching that four-footer slip by on the 18th at the US Open last summer and wondering if he’d ever win again, and of course he has. Three in his past seven starts, actually.
But those aren’t the wins we have in mind. Because we don’t talk as much about 28 titles on the PGA Tour when we talk about McIlroy. We talk even less about his 18 on the DP World Tour and those 122 combined weeks as world No 1.
Maybe that is grotesquely unfair – Paul McGinley believes so, as he told me this week. On a level, I’m inclined to agree. But when we talk about the greats, we talk about majors. And McIlroy knows what we talk about.
I recall a conversation, a few years back, when I introduced myself to him in Dubai and he referenced stories I’d written. Initially I put that down to politeness, but over time it dawned that he reads a huge amount of what is said. Far more than most. We can query how wise that is in a sport where it pays to have an uncluttered mind, but very little of what is written about his place in this game appears different to his own opinions.
So where would he stand, if the major-stage revival never happens? Can he ever jump those hurdles in his mind after all the baggage he has acquired and at Augusta in particular?
McIlroy knows he will ultimately be judged on how many major wins he gets in his career
Golfing great Gary Player (pictured) once said McIlroy needs to win the Masters to complete the major set if he wishes to be regarded as a true king of the sport
After years of heartbreak on the biggest stage, McIlroy winning another major would be a truly great British sporting comeback story
I hope he does – his talent is too vast, his other achievements too numerous, to deserve the disclaimers that would inevitably follow him in perpetuity. I also subscribe to the view of Gary Player, shared in these pages a couple of years ago, that to be considered a true king of this ancient game McIlroy needs to win the Masters and complete the set. Only Player, Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, Tiger Woods and Gene Sarazen can say the same.
That would be a place among golfing royalty and I’d therefore argue the worth of one green jacket would exceed two or three majors of other shades.
At this stage, after the long wait for a fifth, I’m sure McIlroy would settle for the two or three. And quite comfortably.
But no golfer has ever gone longer than 11 years between majors and a month shy of 36, we can say that McIlroy is simultaneously playing close to his best and is also running out time. That window will close sooner rather than later for a man who has been hounded by echoes of his own success since he was 24.
If McIlroy gets another major at this juncture, it will go down as one of the truly great British sporting comebacks. And if he does so at the Masters, we can expand that to a global context.
But he needs to get a move on, starting with the acquisition of any old tapes he can find of Vitas Gerulaitis.
De Bruyne’s exit will be a blow for Haaland
In the same week that Erling Haaland was ruled out for up to seven weeks came the confirmation of Kevin De Bruyne’s departure from Manchester City at the end of the season. If Haaland needed any extra motivation to make an early return, there he has it.
Erling Haaland and Kevin De Bruyne have always seemed to be on the same wavelength
It would be reductionist to see Haaland as a puppet on the Belgian’s string, because his quality warrants far more respect.
But there is also no denying that De Bruyne read his intentions and preferences better than anyone and was usually two-thirds of the way to an assist before the ball was at his own feet.
We can quote numbers in cataloguing his place among the Premier League’s greatest imports, but there is no metric that covers the speed of a mind. We can only guess and mine is that only Dennis Bergkamp’s whirred quicker.
Haaland will have many more great team-mates in his career, and yet it is easy to believe the most valuable of them all is the one heading for the door.
