By now, people expected Rory McIlroy to have won the Masters. At least once.
McIlroy is among those people. He’s 0-for-7 and needs to win at Augusta National to become the sixth player to complete the career Grand Slam.
“I feel like I’ve got everything I need to become a Masters champion,” he said Tuesday. “But every year that passes that I don’t, it will become increasingly more difficult. So there’s no time like the present to get it done.”
McIlroy shot himself out of last year’s tournament with a glacial start. He was 3 over par after 27 holes. He played the final 45 holes in 15 under, but it was far too little to catch Jordan Spieth.
When a reporter asked about the cliche that the Masters starts on the back nine on Sunday, McIlroy replied, “I’d say it starts a lot sooner than that.”
But it won’t start for him until quite late. McIlroy has the final Thursday tee time: 2:01 p.m. Eastern time with Martin Kaymer and Bill Haas.
McIlroy won’t let that get to him, saying: “Look, I’m in the Masters field, and they can put me off at 6 o’clock in the evening and I’ll still get around and play.”
He’ll play nine practice holes Wednesday and then relax.
“I know that’s 24 hours until my tee time, but I have many different ways to pass my time,” he said. “We are working on another jigsaw puzzle and we brought Monopoly to the house that we’re renting, so there’s a lot of really fun stuff going on.”
