Rory McIlroy says 'smart not spectacular' is recipe for success in The Masters

It would be stretching things to claim he’s tried 13 different strategies so far without managing to find that recipe for success in The Masters, but Rory McIlroy has certainly come up with an array of battleplans for that drive up Magnolia Lane to Augusta National.

In his first few attempts to claim a Green Jacket, he just went out with all guns blazing and that approach was set to pay dividends as early as his third visit in 2011 until a closing 80 left him licking his wounds.

Since then, and especially so after this became the missing link in his quest to complete a career grand slam, the Northern Irishman has tried just about everything you could think of to get over that line in the season’s opening major.

He even sounded like a Zen master heading into the 2019 event as he extolled the virtues of meditation and mindfulness only to finish outside the top 20 on that occasion - one of his worst efforts in the season’s opening major apart from two missed cuts.

Having suffered the second of those disappointing early exits 12 months ago following rounds of 76-74, McIlroy has been thinking again about what he needs to do to crack this particular code and he’s prepared to give it a go despite it goes against his basic golfing instinct.

“Just patience, discipline, don't make big numbers,” said the four-time major winner of his planned approach on this occasion. “It feels like a very negative way to think, but it's the way to play around this place. You don't have to do anything spectacular.

“I played with D.J. (Dustin Johnson) in the first two rounds when he won here in 2020. I think he was 12-under after two days, and I got off the golf course thinking 12-under is a helluva score after two days here, but I wasn't in awe of