Dustin Johnson and Rory McIlroy, headed in different directions, received a Masters lesson

The Masters, more than any golf tournament, can be about momentum. When Johnson ran off three straight birdies Friday morning, he had it going one way — to 10 under par, two shots clear of the field, with no bogeys through his first 22 holes. When McIlroy flailed through a tee shot that headed straight for the water at the 16th, he had it going the other — reeling, bringing about real questions not about whether he would contend but whether he would make the cut.

“That’s so bad!” McIlroy called after that shot.

Then how did it get so good?

They played 27 holes together Friday, enough golf to teach us that one shot on the first two days does not define this tournament. Not a brilliant shot. Not a garbage one.

“It’s a day where if you can get it going, you’ve got 27 holes to play, so it could work in your favor,” Johnson said. “I felt like that through the start of the second round.”

Then how did it stall?

The Masters builds on itself — in either direction. Get it pointed the correct way, and the job is to press the gas pedal and not let up. Get it going the other, and there’s time to reel it in and get it righted.

Johnson and McIlroy arrived here with the exact same goal — win their first Masters — and similarly realistic expectations of making it happen. Their paths to the weekend were decidedly different. Johnson opened with a 7-under 65, completed Friday morning after Thursday’s downpours delayed the field and broke up his round — and then posted those birdies on 11, 12 and 13 to get to 10 under just four holes into his second round.

McIlroy, playing alongside him, opened with a 3-over 75 — 10 shots worse, with a foray into the azaleas along the 13th and that rinsed tee shot on 16, two of his five bogeys.

And yet Johnson didn’t run away, and McIlroy didn’t go away.

“I like where I’m at,” Johnson said. “I like my position.”

“I turned it around nicely,” McIlroy said.

But think about how well Johnson played and how tight the field is bunched anyway. Simultaneously, consider how poorly McIlroy finished his first round Friday morning — and how he righted himself with a 66 in a second round that began less than half an hour later. Wrapped in both those performances are so many lessons about the Masters. Among them: the importance of patience and persistence. The idea that a day can turn either way with a single swing or thought or break. And, more than anything, that 72 holes over four days are an impossibly long stretch to determine a champion. Fridays — even marathon Fridays such as this one — provide few absolutes.

McIlroy, who needs only the Masters to complete the career Grand Slam, and Johnson, the game’s top-ranked player, provide perfect illustrations of all of that in part because their talents are so similar and their approaches are so different. McIlroy’s performance can be deciphered without looking at the leader board. Just watch him walk. Is he strutting, chest out, nose aloft? He’s killing it. Are his shoulders slumped and his eyes downcast? He’s struggling.

Johnson is the opposite. His strides are long and languid, ever the same. His face betrays nothing. His answers reveal little. Example: He had to wake up just after 4 a.m. to start this long Friday. Is that a problem? He tilted his head and thought.

“I just get up when I have to get up,” he said.

It is the kind of outward approach that can belie what’s at stake. McIlroy accurately described Johnson’s approach thus: “See ball, hit ball. See putt, hole putt. Go to the next.” He said that not in derision but in admiration.

“I think he’s got one of the best attitudes towards the game of golf in the history of the game,” McIlroy said. “I don’t know if I can compare him to anyone else, but the way he approaches the game is awesome.”

After those three birdies got him to 10 under — and Jordan Spieth’s 36-hole record of 14-under 130 seemed within reach, particularly with three par-5s still to play — Johnson put on the brakes. Or had the brakes put on him. He crushed his drive at the par-4 14th. He had a wedge into the green. And from the middle of the fairway, he had the tiniest bit of mud on the ball. To that point, all of Johnson’s shots had behaved. This one was disobedient.

“It turned right-to-left instead of cut,” Johnson said. So instead of nestling near the flag, it stayed far left, “a spot where I knew I couldn’t hit it.” He three-putted for his first bogey, then hit a 3-iron off the bank in front of the 15th green and back into the water. Three straight birdies, then back-to-back bogeys, then 11 straight pars. From runaway leader, to bunched at the top.

“It’s been a long day,” Johnson said.

It could have been longer for McIlroy. He began the day with a chip at the 10th green — and optimism. Instead of getting up and down for par, he made a bogey — and about came unglued.

“I honestly have been playing so good coming in here, and then I go into the first round and I shoot 75,” McIlroy said, “and I’m like, ‘Where the hell did that come from?’”

He had barely a half an hour to cleanse himself of those sins. The first step: a pep talk — or was it a scolding? — from Jimmy Dunne, the legendary New York investment banker and Augusta National member who knows about everyone in golf.

“Colorful,” McIlroy called it.

The next step: Walk to the range and hit five 9-irons and one 3-wood, telling himself to get through the ball. And then return to the course and the 10th tee. He hit a 3-wood down the hill and a 9-iron into the green and made a birdie. There was the momentum he needed.

“At least gave myself a chance going into the weekend,” he said.

Momentum. It’s a quality that is both important and fickle at the Masters. It could push players in either direction Saturday. But it’s not permanent. Watch it evaporate for one player and appear with another as it did with two of the game’s best players over the course of a Friday that zigged one way, then zagged the other.

The result: Johnson is among the leaders but not in the lead alone. McIlroy remains here in the fight instead of headed home on a flight. And the Masters still has more than half of the tournament remaining to determine a champion.

Source: WP