Still in search of Grand Slam, Rory McIlroy will stop to smell the azaleas

AUGUSTA, Ga. — The case can be made that Rory McIlroy will hit the ground running this week, that his play has been ascendant, that he was runner-up here just two years ago, that his patience will finally be rewarded and that he will cap his historic career by completing his career Grand Slam with a victory in the 88th Masters.

The case can similarly be made that McIlroy will achieve nothing this week beyond more tilting at his personal windmill that Augusta National has become. He has missed the cut at two of the last three Masters. His last major title, the PGA Championship, came 10 years ago. The little Irishman is 34 now, his best golf might be behind him.

But the strongest case can be made that whatever happens this week, he will be his own plot line, if only because this is the Masters, he is Rory and golf can’t turn its head away from good old bout of hardship.

Before McIlroy faced his first reporters Tuesday, Tiger Woods went ahead and answered the question that gets asked louder each April. He’s tried and failed 15 times. Can McIlroy ever win this thing?

“No question, he’ll do it at some point,” Woods said Tuesday. “He’s just ... Rory’s too talented, too good. He’s going to be playing this event for a very long time. He’ll get it done. It’s just a matter of when.

“But, yes, I think that Rory will be a great Masters champion one day and it could be this week. You never know. I just think that just, again, the talent that he has, the way he plays the game and the golf course fits his eye, it’s just a matter of time.”

So, there’s that. No stress. Right.

“Yeah, it’s flattering,” McIlroy responded. “It’s nice to hear, in my opinion, the best player to ever play the game say something like that. I mean, does that mean it’s going to happen? Obviously not. But he’s been around the game long enough to know that I at least have the potential to do it. It’s not like I haven’t been a pretty good player for the last couple of decades.”

While maintaining he’s “a little more in tune with where my game is,” McIlroy’s results this winter were inconclusive. While he won the Dubai Desert Classic in January (no news there; he’s done that four times), he recorded just one top-20 finish in his first five PGA Tour events. After claiming a first-round share of the lead at the Players Championship, he played the last 54 holes at just 2-under to finish 11 shots behind winner Scottie Scheffler, prompting a call to swing Svengali Butch Harmon and a subsequent visit to his Las Vegas school.

His chief complaint: iron play. The two just talked for 45 minutes before McIlroy touched a club. But their time together still resonates. McIlroy said he texts him every day.

“He’s part sort of psychologist, part swing coach,” he said. “Like I always joke about, you spend four hours with Butch and you go away with two swing tips and 30 stories. But you always go away hitting the ball better than when you came.

“Yeah, it was really a beneficial trip for the technical side of things, which I think I made progress in that department last week, especially with my strokes-gained approach numbers, which is what I really wanted to do.”

That tournament last week, the Valero Texas Open, was his first since first seeing Harmon. Carrying a new 4-iron, he finished third, his best showing of the year, ranking in the top five in the shots-gained approach analytic, which measures accuracy in approach shots outside 50 yards. That is a leap from the 62nd place he holds for the season in the same category.

“I think that patterns emerge, the more that you play,” he said. “I feel like I’ve got a big enough sort of data set of rounds, to sort of know how to manage what I’m doing right now. So I think that’s a good thing.”

McIlroy slipped into town early last week for two practice rounds. After 15 trips here, he said he’s tried just about every approach to the year’s first major championship but he summoned the memory of his 18-year-old self playing his first Masters in 2009, recalling how grateful he felt just to play a part. He finished tied for 39th. Sixteen years later, he remains the world’s No. 2 player. Somehow, the stakes seem to have grown with each passing spring.

“Thankfully, I’ve improved a bit since my first start here and I feel like I’ve got all the tools to do well this week,” he said. “But again, to bring those tools out, I think one of the most important things is to enjoy it and smell — I guess not the roses — the azaleas along the way.”