Rory McIlroy hoping Vegas recharge bears fruit at Augusta

Two days before the 2015 Masters, Rory McIlroy stepped out of his preview press conference clearly weary of answering the same question over and over about the career Grand Slam and whether he was about to join only five players in history to achieve that version of golf immortality.

The Tiger era was still far from spent at that point but as the great one approached his 40th birthday later that year, the search to find his successor was already landing on McIlroy who appeared to be on a major-winning schedule not far off what Woods had achieved by the age of 25.

Nine months earlier, after winning the Open at Hoylake, McIlroy had won his third different major championship during an imperious mid-summer run of form not seen since 'peak Tiger' more than a decade earlier.

Every year since 2015, up to finishing second in 2022 and missing the cut last year, there’s been a version of that press conference scenario on repeat every time he’s turned up for the Masters.

It has clearly become tiresome for him and this week he skipped all TV interviews and did just 10 minutes in the general Masters interview room where no one mentioned the words ‘career grand slam’ nor asked anything particularly challenging of him for that matter.

It might be the first time that’s happened in nearly a decade but there is still no escaping the pre-eminence of this week in McIlroy’s mind with the prospect over the next four days of his place in golf history being elevated to a career defining level.

He’s tried many different ways to approach the second weekend in April. There’ve been competitive weeks beforehand, like last week in Texas. He’s tried resting and practicing at home the week before the Masters and has tried dialling up the confident rhetoric