AUGUSTA, GEORGIA | By the time Rory McIlroy reached Augusta National’s first tee for his 10:31 a.m. starting time with Cameron Young and amateur Mason Howell Thursday morning, a sense of nervous normalcy had returned.
The ceremonial act of being Rory McIlroy in his champion’s green jacket at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur and the Drive, Chip and Putt National Finals had passed, and the satisfaction of having hosted a joyful Champions Dinner on Tuesday night lingered like the long finish of the 1990 Chateau Lafite Rothschild he served his exclusive guests.
Among the questions baked into the anticipation of how McIlroy’s next Masters chapter might play out was a simple one: Would he feel differently this time, having shattered his own glass ceiling here one year ago?
By the time McIlroy pulled a tee and his golf ball from his pants pocket to hit his opening tee shot, he had his reaffirming answer.
“It was nice to feel my hand shaking a little bit when the tee went into the ground and struggle to put the ball on top of the tee. So I knew I was feeling it. That’s a good thing,” McIlroy said after his opening 5-under-par 67 that had him tied with Sam Burns for the lead when he finished Thursday.
It is McIlroy’s lowest opening round at Augusta since he shot 65 in 2011 and only the third time in 18 Masters that he has broken 70 in the first round.
He did it piece by piece, fighting a balky driver over the opening holes but finding a way to keep himself steady until he found a swing he could trust. It is a not-so-subtle example of experience for a player who has fought his own impatience through the years on a course that teases opportunities.
“Even though I wasn’t hitting fairways the first few holes … I still kept swinging. I didn’t try to, you know, tee the ball down and hit fairway finders into the fairway. I just trusted that eventually I’ll start to make some good swings. So that was a little bit different.” – Rory McIlroy
McIlroy was even par through seven holes in the sunny, cool conditions and content to ride along until he played his way into form, which he found on the par-5 eighth hole.
Facing a 260-yard uphill second shot, McIlroy considered a 5-wood but knowing the rye grass rough tends to add spin to those shots, he opted to roast a choked-down 3-wood shot up the hill, setting up a two-putt birdie from 21 feet that kick-started a run in which McIlroy played his last 11 holes in 5-under par.
“Even though I wasn’t hitting fairways the first few holes … I still kept swinging. I didn’t try to, you know, tee the ball down and hit fairway finders into the fairway. I just trusted that eventually I’ll start to make some good swings. So that was a little bit different,” said McIlroy, who hit just five fairways Thursday.
As familiar as McIlroy is with Augusta National and the Masters, this is new territory for him. He now shares a locker with Ben Hogan and Raymond Floyd in the champions locker room and his career has come into fuller focus as only the sixth player to complete the career Grand Slam.
Since he fumbled away the 2011 tournament with a final-round 80, McIlroy has arrived at Augusta with an edge of tension attached as he chased a title that played hide and seek with him for more than a decade.
That, like the knee prints McIlroy made in the 18th green when he won last April, is gone but there are still expectations, his own and those put upon him.
When McIlroy turned in 2-under par Thursday, it felt like a wave gathering offshore. He birdied the par-5 13th (he could have saved everyone the drama had he done that on Sunday a year ago), made a 7-footer for birdie at the 14th and made a third straight at the par-5 15th.
McIlroy drove it left there as he did on Sunday last year but this time there was no room to rip a hooking 7-iron into the green so he laid up short of the pond before holing a 29-foot birdie putt that was shaped like a crescent moon, bringing the patrons packing the sun-drenched bleachers beside the Sarazen Bridge to their feet.
It is the first time since 2018 that McIlroy has been inside the top 14 after the first round and if there is a built-in advantage to having won the Masters, McIlroy may have benefited from it Thursday.
McIlroy isn’t particularly superstitious and it’s coincidental that he’s watching “Zootopia 2” with his daughter, Poppy, after watching the original “Zootopia” here last year (he’s also watching the John F. Kennedy Jr. series “Love Story” with his wife, Erica) but an already special week improved on Thursday.
“I said this when I came in on Tuesday, I think winning a Masters makes it easier to win your second one. I do. It’s hard to say because there’s still shots out there that you feel a little bit tight with, and you just have to stand up and commit to making a good swing and not worry about really where it goes,” McIlroy said.
“But I think it’s easier for me to make those swings and not worry about where it goes when I know that I can go to the champions locker room and put my green jacket on and have a Coke Zero at the end of the day.”