Rory McIlroy said he didn’t feel any different. Fifty-two weeks after he crumpled to the ground in ecstasy after achieving his greatest dream, he arrived at the first tee at Augusta National, this time as a Masters champion, and still felt the same rush of emotions he had felt on that tee box for the last 18 years.
“I was nervous, I was anxious just like I always am on that first tee,” McIlroy said after his opening round on Thursday. “I’m thankful that I felt the same as I always have. I think it would be worrisome if I didn’t feel that way because it definitely still means something to me.”
The major-championship nerves were still there for McIlroy, but he was different. This round was different. In the past, as the career Grand Slam chase weighed on McIlroy, he’d routinely succumb to the pressure early, oftentimes shooting himself out of the Masters on a Thursday before the championship really got going. Shaky starts were compounded by mental errors as McIlroy gripped the steering wheel too tightly as he tried to guide himself to history. On Thursday, McIlroy’s liberation from that pressure was evident. Both in how he played — he co-leads at 5-under despite just hitting five of 14 fairways — and how he bounced across the perfectly manicured grass of Augusta National while laughing and talking with 18-year-old amateur Mason Howell.
Howell, who won the U.S. Amateur at Olympic Club, grew up idolizing McIlroy. McIlroy gave him a ball at the 2016 Tour Championship that Howell kept and brought to the first tee on Thursday to show the defending champion. Howell swung so hard on his opening tee shot that his PING hat flew off. His ball sailed left into the ninth fairway. McIlroy’s tee shot also missed left, bounding into the trees. In years past, a tight McIlroy would’ve marched off to his ball, the wheels already spinning as the Masters pressure consumed him. This time? McIlroy and Howell exited the tee box together, laughing as they started their 18-hole walk in the same direction.
“I was on the first tee and couldn’t feel my arms. It was pretty funny,” Howell, who shot 5-over 77, said after his round. “Being able to walk off that tee — and I didn’t hit a good shot, but walking off that tee laughing with Rory, that was pretty funny.”
McIlroy and Howell both made scrappy pars at No. 1. Howell scraped it around the par-5 second for another par, while McIlroy made a birdie despite hitting his tee shot into the right trees. This is where the Masters freedom started to show itself. When the emerald-green anvil was hanging over his head, a few bad swings would have made McIlroy adjust his game plan, get conservative and just try to stay alive. That fear was a handcuff.
Now, forever a Masters champion, those mental shackles were gone.
“I would say that I didn’t hit the ball very well the first seven holes, and sometimes here that would lead me to get tentative and a little guidy, and I kept swinging, just trusting that I’m going to find it eventually,” McIlroy said.
“I just trusted that eventually I’ll start to make some good swings. So that was a little bit different.”
McIlroy bogeyed No. 3 and was stuck in neutral until he hit a brilliant, choke-down 3-wood into the green at No. 8 and made birdie. It’s the kind of shot McIlroy would have more likely botched when he was still trying to walk with the world on his shoulders. He made birdie at No. 9 and turned at 1 under. All the while, he chatted with the 18-year-old Howell as if it were just a normal Thursday and not one at the place that used to torment him. The ghosts are now all but gone.
“We chatted a little bit all day. You know, it was great to pick his brain a little bit. You know, just kind of asked him what does he have coming up and then how does he hit the ball so far, things like that,” Howell said, kidding about the distance inquiry.
McIlroy opened the back nine with three straight pars, including a nifty save on No. 12 after he tugged the tee shot left. He wasn’t playing his best, but he was bounding along at a place he knows he can forever return to. He was patient. In the past, McIlroy would try to press the issue and conjure magic that didn’t exist on that day, leading to sometimes disastrous results. On Thursday, he took his medicine, let things come to him, and capitalized when they arrived.
He made birdies at 13, 14 and 15 to join Sam Burns atop the leaderboard and then parred his way home while joking with Howell as the clubhouse came into view. He took a day where he didn’t have his A-game and turned it into a first-round lead; a day that should’ve been a 70 or 72 and turned it into a 67. Because the real fear, the anxiety that the thing he wanted would never come, that has evaporated. All that remains are the good nerves and the possibility of what Rory McIlroy might do for an encore.
“I said this when I came in on Tuesday, I think winning a Masters makes it easier to win your second one. I do,” McIlroy said. “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.
“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.”
McIlroy and Howell both tapped in for par on 18, shared another chuckle and shook hands. They’ll have one more walk around Augusta National tomorrow. Howell’s goal? Hit more greens and tighten the button on his hat, which came off a few more times after the first tee.
For McIlroy, who is trying to become just the fourth player in history to repeat as Masters champion, the freedom from last year’s momentous victory has him looking like a player who can no longer be broken by Augusta National — one who is finally unburdened by the weight of expectations that held him down at a course tailor-made for his game.
“I think it took me a while to get to that point where, if I focus on the process and the little mini goals of not compounding errors, like today, hitting it in trees and trying to be a hero, making good decisions, thinking my way around the golf course, I think those are the expectations I have for myself,” McIlroy said. “And if I can live up to those expectations, then the scores and the results should take care of itself.”
They did on Thursday, where Rory McIlroy finally showed us what his Masters freedom looks like.
