Whatever happens to Rory McIlroy at Augusta this week, whether he achieves the holy grail and completes the career grand slam, lifting the major curse which has been hanging over him for a decade, or whether he crashes out amongst the camellias again, millions of us will be invested in his progress.
That is because, for all golf’s detractors like to paint the game as stuffy and boring, there is simply no substitute for 72 holes of major championship golf.
At least, that is the opinion of Sir Nick Faldo. “For me, it’s the ultimate physical and mental test,” Faldo says. “Can your game hold up under that pressure? I’m still as fascinated by it as ever. There’s no hiding place in major golf, particularly at Augusta, where you don’t even have to make a mess of a hole to lose confidence.”
Faldo should know. Now 67, it is nearly 30 years since the Englishman won the last of his six major titles – that famous comeback win against Greg Norman at the 1996 Masters. Norman blew a six-shot lead on the final day that year as Faldo hunted him down. Norman never did win at Augusta.
Faldo was renowned for mental toughness in his career. He describes self-belief as “the best 15th club in anyone’s bag”. When he won his first Open Championship at Muirfield in 1987, he remembers walking past the leaderboard on the Wednesday and seeing his name at the top of it. “I thought ‘I can deal with that’. And on the Monday morning, I knew I was going to be with the trophy and having an interview on the BBC. That was part of my visualisation.”
Faldo is uncertain whether McIlroy still has that self-belief. He is not even sure whether McIlroy is sure.
The Northern Irishman has won twice already on the PGA Tour this year. He is certainly playing well enough. “Physically, technically, he’s in great nick,” Faldo says. “It’s just mental now, isn’t it? It’s the battle of dealing with the past. As we know, it’s been 11 years [since McIlroy’s last major win, the US PGA]. So, you know, it’s… how does he deal with that? We don’t know. That’s purely on him. What does he try to do? Can you turn back the clock? Do you start again fresh?
“The bottom line is he’s the best player in the world, so if he can keep saying that to himself… but he’s obviously got so much scar tissue.
“We have such a crazy, fragile game. Rory plays so well at Pinehurst [at the US Open last summer] and then misses a two-footer on 16 in his final round and it scrambles our minds, let alone his mind! It’s unbelievable how one little thing makes you so fragile. You’re only as good as your weakness in our game. But that’s what’s so fascinating about it. That’s why I love it.”
It is also why Faldo remains immune to the charms of LIV Golf or TGL, the indoor golf league launched this year by Tiger Woods and McIlroy. TGL features six teams of three PGA Tour players, competing head-to-head in 15-hole match play on a massive virtual screen and a rotating synthetic, adjustable green. Faldo confesses he hasn’t watched any of it live.
“I see the highlights on TikTok and I think, ‘If that’s the highlights... ’” he says. “You know, the problem is… golf is a great game, isn’t it? It’s a fantastic game. But golf is golf, and we all know what golf is. And then suddenly we’re trying to rebrand golf as something different. And it’s not.
“It’s a fascinating game because we know what you have to go through, physically and mentally, to make it happen. But this modern world comes in, they want instant highlights and whatever… we’re not that game. We know what golf is and we’re fascinated by it. And you can’t rebrand it.”
Faldo is at pains to stress he is not against other formats of the game. Like the YouTube golf channels that are proliferating at the moment, with the likes of Rick Shiels, Grant Horvat and even Bryson DeChambeau all amassing millions of followers, they bring new fans to the game.
It is just that, in his opinion, none of them are the real thing. “I don’t mind them going off and trying different things, like TGL, you know? It’s fun golf. The problem with that one is, hey, once you’ve seen a big screen for the second or third week, it’s still the same, isn’t it? The first week? Fantastic. ‘My God they’ve got a 50 foot screen! A green that moves! Brilliant!’ But once you’ve seen it for the second or third time… you don’t watch your favourite movie every Monday night do you? So, that’s a tough one to sell.”
As for LIV, it is fair to say Faldo is not a fan. He does not care who wins and he is not sure the players do, either.
“Look at the faces of the guys when they’re trying to hype it up,” he says. “I think a lot of those guys are just living out their contracts. They’re not really deep-down happy. I mean, the players are the luckiest devils in the world. You’ve got guys there playing $20 million tournaments who would be lucky to keep a [tour] card. You’ve got the middle guys getting tens of millions and their careers are done. And you’ve got the other guys getting 100s of millions.
“It’s the most unbelievable model. There’s no way you could go to your bank manager and ask for 60 grand and he says, ‘How did you do last year?’ And you go, ‘I made 300 quid. And I spent seven grand on interest and expenses.’ They would pull the plug in five seconds, wouldn’t they?
“But the biggest problem is they have this tag line that they want to ‘supercharge the excitement’. But for me a great round of golf is a guy who puts the blinkers on and plays brilliantly and shoots a 64 and just goes like that [holds up a hand in acknowledgement of the crowd]: ‘Thank you very much.’ Because it needs this to do well [Faldo points at his head]. It’s not like every time you hole a putt, you leap up and down like you’re at the football. Personally I still love the fascination of 72 holes, watching the pressure build, seeing who can hold it together.”
It is why Faldo will be glued to the action in Augusta again this week. He describes Scottie Scheffler’s form in Houston a fortnight ago as “ominous”. He likes Ludvig Aberg, particularly “if the weather’s tough, if it’s a ball-striker’s week”. But most of all, like the rest of us, he is fascinated to see how McIlroy goes.
If he was a betting man, would he say McIlroy will get it done, if not now then at some point in his career?
“I would say, yes,” he replies. “I think he still could. He’s 35. He’s playing great. It’s just the mental side. Rory knows he can beat everybody. He probably knows he can beat Augusta. But it’s himself. How long can he keep the trust in himself going? You can’t be fragile on your trust at all. We have such a brutal game I don’t think you can lose even five per cent of your trust. You’ve got to be 100 per cent, every shot. ‘I can do this. I can do this. I know what to do.’
“The most obvious is trust in his short irons. That’s the key for Rory this week. I mean, he drives it so beautifully. But I come back to ‘where do your bad shots go?’ Making bogeys with short irons in your hands, for pros, that’s demoralising. And it’s gone on for a long time with him. But if he just gets the trust in those short irons, he could do it. Let’s see.
“It’s unbelievable how this game can wreck you, isn’t it? But that’s why it’s so fascinating.”
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