McIlroy brilliance

Rory McIlroy made it look easy. He also made it look hard. And then, just as abruptly, he made it look inevitable once more. For much of the week at the Masters, the narrative seemed preordained. The defending champion opened with rounds of 67 and 65, surging to a six-shot lead, the largest ever at the halfway mark in tournament history. For conventional wisdom, his was a story of control; it was as if the long arc of his career (years of near-misses leading to his eventual breakthrough last year) had finally settled into place.

As McIlroy’s tumultuous love affair with Augusta has shown time and again, however, golf’s premier event has a way of testing conviction. The third round stripped away the illusion of ease. The lead evaporated, swallowed by a 73 and the charge of Cameron Young, who drew level heading into Sunday. And for longtime habitués of the sport, it was a development that had hitherto defined his fraught relationship with the course. By early Sunday, the cracks deepened: a double bogey at the fourth hole, another dropped shot soon after, and suddenly the tournament seemed to tilt away from him.

What followed spoke volumes of McIlroy’s newfound temperament. He steadied himself with calm and precision, piecing together birdies at the seventh and eighth to remain within reach. He then asserted control through Amen Corner, where champions often separate themselves from pretenders. Others faltered in turn. Justin Rose surged, then slipped. Scottie Scheffler mounted a flawless weekend charge, only to come up a stroke short. And by the time he reached the 18th, his task simplified: manage the moment, accept the bogey, and claim the Green Jacket once more.

In doing so, McIlroy joined distinguished company; not since Tiger Woods at the turn of the century had a player won back-to-back titles at Augusta. The victory, his sixth major overall, was as much a coronation as a reaffirmation of a career that has, in recent memory, moved from promise to permanence.

If the Masters revealed anything, to be sure, it is that McIlroy remains decidedly human even at his most complete. “I don’t make it easy,” he conceded, not by way of self-deprecation, but of acknowledgment. The brilliance has always been there; what has evolved is the capacity to endure the times when the light flickers. After all, the Masters does not reward perfection. It demands recovery, insists on recalibration, and, in the end, honors those who persist. Which is to say he did not so much dominate as survive. He got burned and tested, and, in the end, stayed unbroken. Well done.