Whicker: Rory McIlroy ready to putt away his 7-year-old nightmare at Masters

AUGUSTA, Ga. — He is putting up with legends, tapping their wristwatches, asking him to hurry.

He is putting up with seven-year-old vibes that never will dissipate until he becomes the last man standing.

On Sunday he’ll be putting up with yet another American crowd, more courtly than the Ryder Cup banshees of 2016 but still preferring one of their own.

None of that will matter if Rory McIlroy is putting.

For the first time in a long time at Augusta National, he is.

McIlroy and Augusta’s icy greens have held a mutual stare-down for years, ever since McIlroy came into Sunday with a four-shot lead and shot a tearful 80 on Sunday in 2011. Since then, his good rounds at the Masters have mostly been in garbage time.

On Saturday McIlroy shot 65, tying his Masters low, and is 11-under-par, three strokes behind Patrick Reed, with whom he plays Sunday.

He hit his usual mammoth drives and profited from Northern Irish luck. But he also extended his 5-foot-and-in putting streak to 35 of 35.

He is third overall in strokes-gained-putting (Reed is first). He rammed home a 17-footer for birdie on 18, after he scrambled for pars on 16 and 17 and for birdie on 15.

On the 13th McIlroy flew his second shot into the azaleas behind the green, on the left side, and he was delighted to find the ball at all. He got it on the fringe and then made a tough 2-putt for par.

“I’m in that mind-set where I can trust my short game,” he said. “I can trust missing greens and getting it up and down. If I can do that, I’ll produce rounds like today.”

His pairing with Reed recalls the Ryder Cup two years ago at Hazeltine, when Reed won a raucous singles match that had McIlroy muttering about the DUI candidates in the gallery.

“I’ve got nothing to lose,” he said. “All the pressure is on Patrick. He’s got a few guys chasing him who are pretty big-time players. He’s got to deal with that and sleep on it tonight. But it isn’t a two-horse race.”

McIlroy acknowledged that Augusta was smiling on him Saturday, as if Someone Up There In Green wanted him to get on with it. He can become the next player to win all four majors, and only the fourth to do it before his 30th birthday, which comes a month after next year’s Masters.

He clipped the lip of a 5th-hole bunker  deep enough to block the view of the green and all humanity. The ball found the green and McIlroy laughed, and a hard par was made easy. “I could have putted it lefthanded,” he said..

He also chipped in for eagle on No. 8, when the ball was barreling like a hellbound snowball until it hit the hole. And he dodged a flowery disaster on 13.

“It was a sea of pink,” he said. “You know, the azaleas look thick on top but they’re pretty thin underneath and you just pick the club straight up and hit on top of it.”

There is no foolproof template for Masters champs, but many have avoided 3-putts and double bogeys. McIlroy has one of the former and none of the latter, and has only had three bogeys all week. Reed has had two 3-putts and no double bogeys, but eight bogeys. He is winning because he has demolished the par 5s at a 13-under clip. The record, held by four players, is 15-under. McIlroy is 8-under.

McIlroy doesn’t shrink from the ghosts of 2011, which are now old enough to attend second grade. He calls it a “huge turning point” in my career. Before he even teed off, he saw eventual winner Charl Schwartzel, Adam Scott and Jason Day lighting up Augusta, and he wobbled on the front nine and hit that woeful shot near the cabins on 10, a place from where caddies don’t measure yardage.

The 80 plopped the 21-year-old into 15th place and promised to sever his emotions. Three months later McIlroy tore apart the U.S. Open at Congressional, winning by eight, carding 16-under and prompting Graeme McDowell to call him “the best player I’ve ever seen.”

Since then McIlroy has won two PGAs and an Open Championship. Augusta is all that remains.

“That was the day I realized I wasn’t ready to win major championships,” McIlroy said of 2011. “I needed to reflect on that and realize what I needed to do differently. I think I’m ready. I can go out and free-wheel it like today. I don’t have to protect anything.”

Is he putting us on? Or a jacket?

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