It takes quite some courage to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and step back into the spotlight after a pratfall like the one Rory McIlroy took at Augusta.
In his last round at a major, the prodigiously talented young Northern Irishman began Masters Sunday with a four-shot lead and finished it as roadkill, imploding with an 80.
Days like that for golfers — especially 21-year-olds — invite demons that a monastery of priests might never exorcise. (See: Norman, Greg.)
But there McIlroy was on Thursday at Congressional Country Club, on the outskirts of Washington, DC, shooting the day’s only bogey-free round, a 65 that gave him the biggest first-round lead at a US Open in 35 years.
On the second-longest course in US Open history, McIlroy hit a preposterous 17 of 18 greens in regulation. The toughest test he faced all day was the 15-footer he calmly stroked in for par on the single green he missed.
At one point, McIlroy acknowledged he thought he might shoot 62 and break the all-time majors scoring record.
“The game’s easy when you hit it straight and make every putt,” said an envious Phil Mickelson, who played alongside McIlroy.
(Well, not literally alongside him because while McIlroy was in the fairway, Phil was in the weeds, looking for his tee shots.)
“It’s a wonderful game. No course is too tough when you hit it like that. He played terrific.”
I asked McIlroy what it said about him that he could bounce back from the devastation of Augusta so soon.
“That I’ve got a very short memory?” he responded.
“I took the experience form Augusta and I learned a lot from it.
“But you can’t be thinking about what’s happened before, you’ve got to just be thinking about this week.”
McIlroy has now had the first-round lead at three of the past four majors. He shot 65 to open at Augusta and a majors-record-tying 63 at St Andrews. At the PGA Championship last fall he was tied for the lead with three holes to play before an untimely three-putt, then missed a 15-foot birdie putt on the last that kept him out of the playoff.
Be sure, these performances are Tigeresque. The difference being, of course, that McIlroy has precisely no trophies to show for his brilliance. At St. Andrews he followed his first round with an 80.
The challenge now, if he’s to become the youngest US Open winner since Gene Sarazen won the 1922 Open at the age of 20, is to keep his head for three more days.
Easier said than done on a layout that was softened by rains on Thursday but promises to bare its teeth beginning Friday.
McIlroy knows the dangers that lie ahead. He said he’d gladly take 6 under par now and sit in the clubhouse for the next three days.
“This golf course is only going to get firmer and it's going to get harder,” he said.
“I still think something around 2, 3, 4 under par, something like that, is going to have a good chance. Even something around level par is probably going to come very close on Sunday. It's a US Open.”
What McIlroy won’t do, however, is think too far ahead or take his foot off the pedal.
“It’s hard to put thoughts out of your head about going on and winning and everything but you’ve got to really stay in the present,” he said.
“Going back to Augusta, the first three days I played aggressively.
“I played smartly but I played aggressively to my targets. And then on Sunday, I started to play defensively, and that’s when things can go wrong.”
What helped, too, was a pep talk two weeks ago from Jack Nicklaus, who was three months older than McIlroy is now when he won his first Open.
Nicklaus told McIlroy he didn’t want to see another major implosion from him.
“He just said he would kick my backside,” McIlroy said, drawing laughter.
“We just had a laugh and a joke about it, and it was all good fun. He said to me, ‘I’m expecting big things from you.’
“It’s a nice pressure to have knowing that the greatest player ever at the minute thinks that you’re going to do pretty good.”
McIlroy will do well to heed Jack’s advice.
“He emphasized so much to me about not making mistakes. That was his big thing.
“He said people lost a lot more majors and gave them to him than he actually won. It was a good piece of advice to have.”
