It looked that way again when his second shot into 11 bounded toward the water left of the green, somehow staying dry in a spot where that just doesn’t happen. He made bogey, but it didn’t feel terribly significant after DeChambeau rinsed his approach.
He made the safe play on 12, then took the safe route on 13 with a layup to give himself an easy wedge with plenty of green to work with for his third shot.
What ensued from there conjured up that infamous image of McIlroy in the cabins left of the 10th tee in 2011, as he inexplicably missed short and right and found the water for a costly double bogey.
A bogey on 14, coupled with Rose going on a heater, left McIlroy walking off that green one shot back after departing the 12th with a four-shot lead.
His second shot into the par-5 15th, a high, majestic right-to-left bender from 209 yards to 6 feet, was one of the best shots in Masters history, shades of Mickelson’s second from the pine straw on 13 on Sunday in 2010 – and, like Mickelson, the eagle putt never scared the hole but set up a tap-in birdie.
He safely navigated 16’s dangerous back-right pin position, then delivered another shot of a lifetime on 17 from 196 yards to 2 feet. A birdie gave him the lead at 12 under, only for Rose to crank up the volume one more time with his 10th birdie of the day on the 18th green to get into the clubhouse at 11 under.
A titanic blast off the tee on 18 gave McIlroy an easy wedge into the green, and he again blacked out on the approach, depositing it in a bunker and missing a five-footer for par and the Slam.
Back to 18 they went, Rose with momentum and some rhythm after heading to the practice area for some swings while McIlroy finished up, McIlroy catching his breath from another rollercoaster plunge. He’d shown so much mental toughness and patience all week, but how could he possibly regroup from this so quickly?
“After scoring, (caddie Harry Diamond) and I were walking to the golf cart to bring us back to the 18th tee, and he said to me, ‘Well, pal, we would have taken this on Monday morning.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, absolutely we would have.’ That was an easy reset. He basically said to me, look, you would have given your right arm to be in a playoff at the start of the week. So that sort of reframed it a little bit for me.
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