Rory McIlroy hopes fall success carries over to November Masters

Rory McIlroy has enjoyed success in the second half of the calendar year during his PGA Tour career, which bodes well for the Northern Irishman’s chances in a first-ever fall Masters, which starts Nov. 12.

Of McIlroy’s 18 career PGA Tour wins, 10 have come between July and November. He’s only won once in November (last year’s WGC-HSBC Champions), but has never won a tournament in April, the normal month of the Masters.

On April 12, six days after Augusta National Golf Club announced the November dates for the 2020 Masters, six-time champion Jack Nicklaus was asked how he thought McIlroy would fare in a fall Masters. It is being held seven months later than normal because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Photos: McIlroy at the Masters

The change seemed to “be to Rory’s favor” because “he seems to play better in the fall,” Nicklaus told Golf Channel.

In addition to acknowledging that fact, McIlroy at the time said he liked that the 84th Masters would be the final major championship of 2020 instead of the first one, as is the custom.

“I feel like there’s anticipation going to Augusta, the first big event of the year,” he said. “There’s all this hype. I don’t think it’ll feel like that this year. I think it’ll feel a little bit different, which I’m looking forward to. It’s going to be a different Masters, and personally, selfishly, maybe that’s what I need to get the jacket.”

McIlroy needs a victory in Augusta to complete the career Grand Slam. This will be his sixth attempt to join Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. He has four majors – the last coming in the 2014 British Open.

The Masters date change might have come in the wrong year for McIlroy – he was playing great at the start of the PGA Tour’s wraparound season for a change. Starting on Oct. 27, 2019, he had finished in the top five in all six tournaments before the Tour shut down in mid-March.

Because of his normally stellar fall record, it wasn’t surprising that he tied for third in the ZoZo Championship in late October 2019 and won the HSBC Championship in early November.

But he kept it up in 2020 as spring approached. In his next PGA Tour start, on Jan. 26, at the Farmers Insurance Open, he tied for third. He followed that with three consecutive fifth-place finishes.

When the Tour returned to action, McIlroy wasn’t the same player. Starting with the Charles Schwab Challenge in mid-June, he had only one top-15 finish (T-11 at the Travelers) in his next seven starts. His other finishes were un-McIlroy-like (T-32, T-41, T-32, T-47, T-33 at the PGA Championship in August and T-65.

However, once the calendar turned to September, McIlroy showed signs of his early 2020 form. He tied for 12th in the BMW Championship in late August, tied for eighth the following week at the Tour Championship and had another T8 in the U.S. Open in September.

McIlroy’s streak of five consecutive top-10 finishes in the Masters Tournament ended last year.

Instead of being among the leaders after 54 holes as he had been in the previous five Masters, last year McIlroy was 12 shots behind the lead and had to finish the tournament on the ninth hole. Because of expected severe afternoon weather, tee times were moved up and half the field – those 11 shots off the lead and worse -- went off No. 10 in the final round. McIlroy was in the third group off, at 7:52 a.m.

“Nice and quiet,” is how McIlroy described the scene when he finished his round on No. 9.

This will be McIlroy’s 12th Masters, and his first as a 30-something (his birthday is May 4 and he’s 31 now, meaning he never played in the Masters at age 30 because of the tournament date change).

Of course, McIlroy appeared on the way to winning a green jacket in his third start, in 2011. At age 21, he carried a four-shot lead into the final round after opening with 65-69-70. He closed with 80 and tied for 15th.

“I think it takes awhile for to you get comfortable on this golf course and the surroundings. But I have, I've got that comfort level now and it took maybe five or six years to get to that point,” McIlroy said. “With the golf course, getting to know the members, getting to know the staff at the club, all of that goes into just being more comfortable. And I know I've played well enough and I've shot enough good scores around here over the years that, you know, if I can put my best effort forward, I'm going to have a good chance to do well here.”

When he tied for fifth at Riviera in early February, McIlroy moved to No. 1 in the World Golf Ranking for the first time since 2015. Three weeks later, after the Arnold Palmer Invitational, he became only the third player to have cumulatively been No. 1 for 100 weeks. Tiger Woods was No. 1 for 683 weeks and Greg Norman did it for 331 weeks.

In mid-October, he was ranked fourth in the world.