Masters 2025: After the years of heart, will it finally be Roy McIlroy’s time in Augusta?

Augusta, him. – Not since Greg Norman has a player so thoroughly represented a dichotomy of the professional golf version of “midnight in the garden of good and evil”.

Non-Family novel from John Bendta, which was greatly adapted to the 1997 film, is the southern Gothic turning on the eternal struggle between rights and wrong and whether the metaphor for the place in which the selection is located in Eve 64^th The main beginning.

Those who keep such things It will tell you that Northern Irishman enters this year’s masters as a qualified favorite, with a double winner Scottie Scheffler was the end of the newspaper in Augusta National. McIlroy won twice on the PGA tour this season with pebble beaches and players – an event for signature and leading circuit tournament, respectively – and checks all boxes to start the first Grand straw.

Augusta National is a top tense that is striking with the highest GIR (greenery in regulation) biases and, not surprising, McIlroy is the first this season in accessing (pick more than breaking in the field this season). But these are not statistics or analytics that make McIlroy’s 17^th Start at a master’s degree of forced, it’s emotion.

Seventeen times, including that infamous beginning in 2011. years when he entered the final round with a four-stroke lead and faded to a connection for 15^thHe drove Magnolia Lane, and he left without one thing every professional golfer so deeply long – a green jacket.

“I’ve always loved this course. I’ve always loved – people ask me,” If you could play only one golf course for the rest of my life, what would that be? “And I think he would walk around this every day was pretty cool,” Mcicroy said on Tuesday in Augusta National.

But if Mcicloy’s relationship with Augusta is a national love story, it was a story about unrequited love.

He had a lot of success on masters with seven top 10 endings; As well as a lot of heart deed, which is perfectly framed by his “11 broom.

Challenge for Mciclroy, perhaps more than any other player in the field, is a professional golf version of Berendova classic taken: Do you like the process or result?

On Monday, Xander Schauffele unintentionally framed on the narrative when they asked him about the unique pressures coming with which one in the most important events of the game.

“There is a quiet (element), if you can find it; there is a serene part if you allow yourself to enjoy it almost”, Xander Schauffel. “But I think so high stress is to make it hardest in those points to keep your process with your Caddy. That’s the hardest thing you can get it. And you can do it better when you’re under the gun, I think you’ll be more successful.”

Based on McIlroy’s tone, desperately would like to accept the kind of “peace” of which Schauffele spoke.

“I think it’s a self-preservation mechanism (finding a way to enjoy the hunting of more than a trophy). It’s just something you’re trying to don’t set up 100 percent of yourself. It happens in all the layers of life,” McIlroy said. “At a certain point in one’s life, someone doesn’t want to fall in love because they don’t want to break their heart.”

McIlroy is not a foreigner with heart attack. Last year at Pinehurst, he was exactly four holes away from victory on another American open-end and ended up on Bogey-Bogey-pair-Bogey and a stroke behind Bryson Dechambeau champions. That loss lasted a week that wander the streets of New York to deal with, but it was his campaign for 2019. year that would ultimately ultimately decide that his masters of destiny.

According to most accounts, McIlroy’s ’19 season was a success, with three victories, the top 10 of the 10th finishing and name FedExcup. But his play in Mažoreci, which was highlighted by his tie for the eighth on the PGA championship, left him thirst.

“It was after the season in 2019. years. I had a great year. I had the best statistical season ever. But I didn’t have a great season at the big championships,” he recalled. “I somehow committed myself from 2020. years ago, I committed myself that I would be a little more separated and to give a little more in these weeks.”

In 19 main starts from his season 2019. years, McIlroy has 11 top 10s and three displays in the transfer; Compared to the 10 best 10s and single ending at 7 pm before the end before the end of the season 2019. years.

For McIlroy, the decision was simple, if it is not cliché – it is better to love and lose than never loved.