It perhaps isn’t the most professional of ways to start an article, but we’re going to do it anyway and offer you a little peek behind the curtain. This isn’t the first time that we have written this article, nor is the second, third, fourth or even fifth time.
This is actually the sixth time that we have sat down to write an article with exactly the same title as this and that should tell you an awful lot about how the rest of this piece is going to go and McIlroy’s overall chances in the 2024 Masters.
In the current Masters odds, Rory McIlroy is ranked as the second favourite to win the tournament and get his hands on the famous green jacket with DraftKings rating him as the +1000 second favourite behind Scottie Scheffler.
In this article we take a closer look at those odds and try to work out whether DraftKings are right to rank him so highly or whether they have made a big mistake. Read on to find out our verdict.
History
The Northern Irishman has competed in 14 Masters Tournaments with his debut at Augusta coming in 2009 when he placed 20th. Since then the closest McIlroy has come to getting his hands on a green jacket was in 2022 when he finished second with a record of seven under par.
There was also the close call in 2015 when his scored of 12 under was only good enough for a fourth placed finish and the two fifth placed finishes of 2018 and 2020 respectively. The running theme however for McIlroy is that the Augusta course is simply his kryptonite.
Those finishes don’t tell the full story of McIlroy at the Masters though, for that we have to go back to 2011 when he finished 15th. On the final day of that tournament, the 21-year-old Ulsterman teed off with a more than comfortable four shot lead over his nearest rival.
At the 10th hole though, he hit a drive into the trees that not only knocked him off course for the rest of the hole but totally derailed his entire tournament hopes. In a disastrous next three holes McIlroy dropped six shots to surrender his lead and would go on to finish joint 15th.
That day appears to have cemented itself firmly in McIlroy’s psyche and, try as he might, he has been unable to overcome that psychological barrier ever since. So can he finally remove the Masters millstone from around his neck?
We Don’t Know
It’s not the answer you’re looking for and it’s not the answer that we want to give, but it’s the only logical one given the circumstances. We’ve trawled back through the archives and read every McIlroy Masters preview we’ve ever written.
In each and every one of them we discuss McIlroy’s psychological issue with Augusta and either point to his good recent form as reasons to be hopeful or his bad recent form as reasons to be pessimistic.
This time around we’re not going to bother with any of that. For Rory the Masters isn’t a case of skill, we all know that he has the talent to win the tournament. It’s a matter of psychology and whether he’s capable of conquering his own demons and maintaining a cool and calm head when it’s most needed.
Who are we or anyone on the outside to speculate as to whether that’s likely to happen? The only people that know are the ones that work with Rory McIlroy on a day to day basis and even they don’t fully know the answer.
The only thing we’ll offer in summary is that to win the Masters, Rory McIlroy is going to have to overcome Scottie Scheffler who has been in imperious form recently. The 27-year-old is not only the favourite with DraftKings to win the Masters but he’s favourite with pretty much every sportsbook out there.
So with such an impressive opponent as Scheffler to overcome and the previously discussed psychological hurdles, it’s more than likely that McIlroy will fall at the final hurdle once again and we’ll be back writing this same article in 12 months’ time.
As we look out of our office window to the rolling hills of the Ulster countryside, it’s apparent why we hope that won’t be the case though…