hat he will just keep dragging himself out from under the tonnage of words dedicated to his pursuit of a Career Grand Slam, every Masters Tuesday in the oak-panelled media auditorium taking us to an echo-chamber.
By now, the watching world is almost up to PhD level on the psychology he carries into golf’s most bewitching playground, given there have been times here when Rory stopped just short of referencing the rotations of the moon in his willingness to talk us through the traps set when trying to tame Augusta National.
His fashion is to be more philosophical these days and McIlroy pointedly deployed the expression “less pressure” three times within 20 minutes yesterday under questioning about his readiness, essentially, to move his career on from the old world of 2014.
Outwardly, he carries the carefree persona of someone getting ready to light a Sambuca, but his keen interest in the game’s history makes it obvious that he is not deaf to the rising chorus around him.
Eight years on from his last Major, McIlroy remains one of the world’s best golfers, a player with — as we were reminded yesterday — a win and two top-five finishes from five starts this season and someone with a significant form-line here too, notably six top-10 finishes in his last 10 Masters.
He has a game — high ball-flight, huge distance — that should be perfect for Augusta, yet it is hard to make a compelling case for him getting to the Butler Cabin on Sunday evening.
Rory frustrates people because, frankly, he appears to lack the competitive steel required to outplay modern superstars of the game on a Sunday back nine like his hero, Tiger Woods, did so thrillingly in 2019.
One year earlier, McIlroy had been last out with Patrick Reed in the final round and was already drifting into the gentle twilight of surrender halfway through their outward nine. Reed won that green jacket essentially playing par golf, his supposed opponent a ghost beside him.
Rory’s drive on the first hole went so far right that day it almost left the golf course. With Reed already in trouble up the left, it seemed a shockingly clumsy swing.
Reminded of that yesterday, he referenced a poor warm-up on the range in which he’d been “missing everything left” and the experience turning into a strange day in which “I probably forced the issue a little too much”.
Which, of course, brings us to the muscle of any question about Rory and contending now. The question of strategy.
He can still seem head-strong, delusional even when clear-thinking (or an assertive caddy) is demanded. In January’s Dubai Desert Classic, McIlroy had 10 minutes to consider his options with a muddy ball on 18 before effectively pulling the pin from a grenade, taking on a 267-yard shot to a pin protected by water.
Should wiser counsel not have prevailed, given a lay-up par promised at least a place in a play-off?
Rory talked a lot yesterday about reining in that naturally aggressive instinct and specifically about how any reluctance to do so at Augusta dooms a man to inevitable failure. If anything, he sounded like he was recommending we look elsewhere.
The key qualities for a Masters challenge were, he repeated almost continuously, “patience and discipline”. Asked if that kind of course management was against his nature, McIlroy — to be fair — didn’t demur.
“Yeah, yeah,” he agreed. “Again, to me, it feels playing very negatively, playing away from trouble, not firing at flagsticks, not being aggressive. It feels like a negative game plan, but it’s not. It’s just a smart game-plan. It’s playing the percentages.
“On Sunday, if you need to take risks, you take them obviously. But for the first 54 holes, you just have to stay as disciplined as possible. Yeah, that goes against my nature a little bit, so it’s something I have to really work on.
“And Augusta beats you into going for flags that you shouldn’t go for.”
A little unconvincingly, he suggested that missing last weekend’s cut in Texas had been “beneficial” given it allowed him two additional days of practice. And he talked of looking forward to the “fun” of having daughter Poppy around for today’s par-three contest.
Listening, it was hard not to think of an interview given to the Sunday Independent five years ago in which McIlroy expressed hatred for the electric countdown of Masters week.
“I hate the hype” he said. “I hate the… you’re being asked to do so many interviews, the cover of this magazine, the cover of that magazine… and I don’t want to deal with it.
“In an ideal world, I would just shut myself away and turn up at Augusta.”
His tone is markedly different now, more peaceable, maybe even resigned.
The last time he won a Major, Rory McIlroy was a blockbuster movie. But the credits on that story rolled a long time ago and he comes here peddling what seems, at times, almost synthetic confidence.
A man perhaps needing nothing more urgently now than a lucky break.
