Rory McIlroy’s Tuesday press conference has become a modern-day Masters tradition, his annual attempt to explain exactly how he’s planning to go about finally winning the thing that fits right in alongside the par-three contest, the pimento cheese sandwiches, and watching the players try to skip the ball across the water during the practice rounds. In the 13 years since McIlroy blew a four-shot lead here on the Sunday in 2011, he seems to have tried it every which way, fat and thin, zoned out and dialled in.
There were years when he played the course over and over before the tournament, years when he hardly stopped here at all, years when he talked up how much it meant, and years when he played it down. “Yeah,” McIlroy said himself this year. “This is my 16th start in the Masters, so I feel like I’ve done it quite a few different ways.”
