Rory McIlroy’s putting, runner-up finish fuel optimism

AUGUSTA, Georgia – In this, his 15th Masters Tournament, Rory McIlroy was asked Tuesday about the support he receives each April at Augusta National Golf Club, with its patrons pulling for him to break through and capture that elusive green jacket to complete his majors collection.

“Yeah,” McIlroy said with a grin, “no one wants to win this tournament more than me, right?”

If McIlroy does not win to become the sixth player to win all four majors – Sarazen, Hogan, Player, Nicklaus, Woods – it will not be for a lack of preparation. McIlroy has been a frequent tourist in Augusta the last three weeks, logging 81 holes in practice rounds through Monday alone. Success has its privileges. Why practice at home in balmy Florida when you can hop in the private jet and go sample the real thing?

Yes, McIlroy left Augusta without collecting that long-awaited fifth career major title. (His last was the 2014 PGA Championship at Valhalla.) But a final-round 64 – capped by an electric hole-out for birdie from a bunker at the 72nd hole – gave him a runner-up finish and vital self-belief.

“The only thing that I can say is that I proved to myself that I could do it,” he said Tuesday in the interview room at Augusta National’s massive press facility, where a photo of a beaming McIlroy, arms raised, shone on an oversized wall monitor.

McIlroy, who will turn 34 next month, has made improvements since then and hopes they push him over the top this week. He worked himself into a new driver (shortened to 44 inches) at the recent World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play. He wielded a new putter, as well, trading his familiar TaylorMade Spider X mallet for a bronze, blade-style Scotty Cameron 009M (Masterful) model (stamped “Rors”) similar to one he used earlier in his career.

The result: a run to the semifinals, where he lost in a playoff to Cameron Young.

McIlroy’s driving can seem like a gift from the golf gods. He rips long, towering draws that never want to fall from the sky. His putting, though, can look like hard work and has held him back. At times, he has been too technical, too encumbered in technique, a bit too static.

Five years ago, shortly before the 2018 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, McIlroy reached out to his South Florida neighbor, Brad Faxon, an eight-time PGA TOUR winner and one of the best putters of his generation. McIlroy wanted help.

Their first talking point, and the first lesson, came from McIlroy himself.

“I don’t think about a ‘f-ing’ thing when I hit a tee shot,” he told Faxon.

Faxon nodded and filed it away before turning it back on his new pupil.

“Would you be OK putting great, but having no idea what you did?” Faxon asked.

“I’d kill for that,” McIlroy said.

“Then we’ll get along,” said Faxon.

The two went to work at the Bear’s Club, and a week later McIlroy was a winner at Bay Hill.

Faxon doesn’t call what he presents to McIlroy as drills; he dubs them “games.” Putting is about fun, right? Freedom, too. Faxon once conducted a clinic at Bay Hill and told a group of juniors that he looked at long putts the way a basketball player might approach a game of horse: That hoops player would not get caught up in the “how” of a jump-shot stroke, where his elbow was, his release, etc. He simply would freely put up the shot. Shooters shoot, instinctively.

Faxon has had McIlroy putt with a 5-wood, the bottom of his sand wedge, and the sideways toe of a blade putter to foster creativity and instinct, freeing his mind on the greens. Specifically for the Masters, McIlroy said he worked on things such as making sure he is watching the ball enter the hole in the right spot. He practiced big, breaking putts that put a premium on proper speed.

“We play these little fun games on the putting green trying to hole putts above a coin, and then below a coin, and varying the speed of the way the ball goes in the hole,” McIlroy explained. “And just sort of seeing that ... that's the sort of stuff you need to do at Augusta.

As for how Faxon instructs? “He sort of lets me be me,” McIlroy said.

Faxon scoffs when people tell him he is lucky that he was born a great putter. He worked at it. He asked questions. He learned from the greats before him, such as two-time Masters winner Ben Crenshaw. Watching putts fall can be fun. And sometimes it takes a simple reminder that putting is just a singular game within a bigger game.

“I think he is enjoying putting,” Faxon said of McIlroy. “I don’t think he goes home anymore worried about his stroke. Last year, he finished 16th (in Strokes Gained: Putting). He used to be outside the top 150. So, he’s been a lot more consistent with it. Not that he doesn’t have a bad putting week – we all do – but I think he is better.”

McIlroy has had a slow start this season on the greens, even though he has played quite nicely overall. Having gained nearly half-a-stroke on the field per round a year ago, the world No. 2 has been giving up a half-a-stroke this season, ranking him 175th. Stats don’t tell the whole story. At the Match Play, where McIlroy put his new putter in play (he had used it in his practice at Augusta), he holed some pivotal mid-range putts on the way to a third-place showing (he beat Scottie Scheffler in the consolation match) and felt as if he found something to build upon.

Putting is critically important at Augusta, where McIlroy was 20th in total putts (116) at Augusta a year ago – “clearing a hurdle,” according to Faxon. On Sunday, one week before a green jacket will be placed over the champion's shoulders at the 87th Masters, McIlroy could not help but take notice of the young juniors taking their chances at 15- and 30-foot putts on Augusta’s hallowed 18th green in the Drive, Chip and Putt Finals.

They were kids, playing a game, enjoying what they were doing. There is an old television clip of a very young McIlroy at home in Northern Ireland, smiling as he chips golf balls into a washing machine. He was completely natural. In essence, as he seeks to pick up where he left off at Augusta in 2022 – that’s the inner youngster that McIlroy wants to summon this week.

“Bob Rotella (the sports psychologist who helps McIlroy) tells me all that time, ‘When you were six years old, did you read a putt? No, you went purely on instinct,’” McIroy said. “And usually instinct is ... as you proceed to get smarter and get more wisdom, you start to question that instinct more and more. But every time you go back to it, it seems like that instinct is the right answer at the start. There’s a lot of us that play golf in this room. The more that we can be childlike on and around the greens, the better, I think.”

Especially if it helps to land that coveted green jacket.