Cruel lesson learned

The truism is that the Masters doesn't really start until the back nine on Sunday. And, as Brian Wacker notes, Rory McIlroy joined a long list of golf's greats who have had their Green Jacket dreams rudely interrupted.

By Brian Wacker, PGATOUR.COM Site Producer

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Before you can walk you have to learn to crawl. Boy wonder Rory McIlroy found this out the hard way Sunday at Augusta National.

Cool and confident all week and displaying a maturity long beyond his 21 years of age, McIlroy learned the cruel lesson that so many others who have strode these fairways before him have: The Masters truly doesn't start until the back nine on Sunday -- and it’s usually lost there, too.

Ben Hogan. Arnold Palmer. Scott Hoch. Greg Norman (twice). Rory McIlroy.

In this case, that’s inauspicious company for McIlroy whose four-shot lead going into Sunday disintegrated into an 80-stroke disaster as he tumbled to a tie for 15th in a major championship he seemed so poised to win, much the same way a 21-year-old Tiger Woods did more than a decade ago.

If there’s anything the rest of us learned it’s that Rory is no Tiger as he was once dubbed in Northern Ireland newspapers with headlines like: “The New Tiger” and “Ror of the Tiger.”

That is by no means an indictment of McIlroy.

The comparisons to Woods were inevitable as McIlroy too took to golf as a toddler and by age 2 was already driving it more than 30 yards. By age 9, McIlroy won the world’s under-10 championship and by the time he was a teenager he was winning everything in sight and had reached No. 1 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking in 2007.

Four years later, McIlroy is surely crushed but his career not scarred after suffering his third major meltdown in nine months.

“I'm very disappointed,” McIlroy said. “I was leading this golf tournament with nine holes to go, and I just unraveled. Hit a bad tee shot on 10, and then never really recovered.

“It's going to be hard to take for a few days, but I'll get over it.”

It was less than a year ago that McIlroy set the golf world abuzz with an opening 63 at the British Open at St. Andrews only to shoot 80 the next day and eventually finish third.

A month later, McIlroy was again in contention on one of the game’s biggest stages at the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits -- until he three-putted the 15th hole in the final round and ultimately finished one stroke out of a playoff with Bubba Watson and Martin Kaymer.

At the Masters, he seemed to have learned from those experiences. McIlroy sprinted out of the gate with a bogey-free 65 in the opening round and by the time Saturday night came he had built a four-shot cushion and was well on his way to securing what looked to be the first of many major championships.

McIlroy was so comfortable in fact that he’d taken to throwing a football around with his friends every night outside the rented house they were staying in for the week.

For three days, McIlroy had also played with good friend Jason Day, 23, and the first two also with 22-year-old pal Rickie Fowler.

Then came Sunday and it was time to get serious. McIlroy was paired with Angel Cabrera, an intimidating figure in stature if not by nature. He’d also won here before.

Given the circumstances, McIlroy did well to last for nine holes -- especially with two bogeys, including one to start, over his first five holes. But it wasn’t long before McIlroy lost his speed on the greens, the line on his putts and the focus in his game along with the Green Jacket.

It didn’t help either when the roars that started to reverberate through the tall pines of Augusta National were for just about everyone except young Rors.

“When you could hear all those roars,” McIlroy’s agent Chubby Chandler said. “That’s fairly unnerving having never been in that position.”

Some of those roars were for Woods, who was putting on a charge of epic proportions. He would falter, too, but his day was nowhere near the debacle McIlroy’s had become.

McIlroy's situation drew dire with a triple bogey on No. 10, where he hit his tee shot so far to the left that it landed next to Peek and Berckman Cabins, which are practically off the property.

When McIlroy sent another tee shot straying off into orbit on No. 13, his shoulders slumped and his head dropped over his arm; McIlroy’s body held up only by his driver.

“I'd sort of realized, unless I birdied my way in, I realized I didn't have a chance,” McIlroy said. “I realized that was it.”

The rest of us knew it was over long before that.

Right from the beginning McIlroy looked suddenly uncomfortable with the spotlight shining squarely on him. The heat of the day choked his swing and his putting stroke as he missed one short putt after another after another with his hands breaking down like an old jalopy.

“I think Rory must have had lots of pressure on him leading by that far,” said Masters champion Charl Schwartzel, who pointed out that unlike McIlroy, he had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Instead of the torch being passed from one generation -- Tiger's -- to the next -- Rory's -- McIlroy got torched by the mistake of getting ahead of himself and waking up Sunday morning thinking that he was going to win the Masters.

“I think it's a Sunday at a major, what it can do,” said McIlroy, who to his credit held his head high and stuck around to answer what must have seemed like endless questions following the biggest final-round gag job here since Greg Norman in 1996. “This is my first experience at it and hopefully the next time I'm in this position I'll be able to handle it a little better.

“I didn't handle it particularly well today obviously, but it was a character-building day, put it that way. I'll come out stronger for it.”

Schwartzel offered encouraging words as well, saying that McIlroy is going to win a major at some point.

“Golf is a really funny game,” Schwartzel said. “One moment you’re on top of it. The next moment it bites you.

“He’s going to feel hurt. It’s not easy, what he went through. He’s such a phenomenal player. He’ll win one.”

The first just happens to be the toughest, and that may be the biggest lesson of all.