McIlroy Visits Augusta National Looking To ‘Fill Up The Confidence Bucket A Bit’.

6 months ago by Comments Off on McIlroy Visits Augusta National Looking To ‘Fill Up The Confidence Bucket A Bit’.

You would think that after capturing a second PGA Tour this year with victory last fortnight at The Players that Rory McIlroy’s game is pretty sharp, and not needing to much panel beating ahead of The Masters.

Though that’s not the case not only with McIlroy but will all golfers pros or amateurs.

While European Ryder Cup winning colleague Viktor Hovland clearly ironed out some of his major golfing issues in capturing theValspar Championship, McIlroy was ‘poking holes’ is game tackling Augusta National.

It was 2009 when McIlroy first contested The Masters and now ahead of his 18th appearance McIlroy revealed he spent the ‘quiteness’ of last week not only of refamilising himself with the Georgia golfing gem but also ‘filling up the confidence bucket a little bit'”.

 


“I’m obviously playing well, I want to keep playing well, so I think every round you play where you see good things you’re sort of filling
up that confidence bucket a little bit, so I want to see that”, he said ahead of this week’s Texas Children’s Houston Open.

“I still — look, it was great to get a win a couple weeks ago but I still feel I could have played a lot better. I tried to poke holes in a lot of my game last week and think about things I could do better, and there were definitely things that I could work on or do better.

“It’s a good opportunity to go out and see if some of the work I did at home and I’m continuing to do here, hopefully it’s all going in the right direction”.

McIlroy observed some subtle changes to Augusta National but also a slightly different outlook to the area around at the par-4 16th green and that the result earlier this year to violent storm damage.

“I use those trips just to refamiliarize myself with the place, clubs off tees, looking to see if they changed any greens”, said McIlroy.

“There’s four greens that are new this year that they’ve redone. You just sort of, you have a look at those and see if there’s any new hole positions they give you, stuff like that.

Apart from that, honestly for me, it’s nice to play a practice round without people around and it sort of takes the pressure off the start of the week for me. There’s a lot of obligations, there’s big commitments whether it be from media or the par-3 tournament on Wednesday. I
just like to get up there and feel like I’m not rushed Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday the week of the tournament and that’s usually the reason I go there.

“And as for the 16th?  Yeah, the loss of a few trees is definitely noticeable, but in terms of like they’ve had to redo that green but it’s exactly the same as what it was.

“The hole will play — apart from maybe a few less shadows on the green late in the day because of a couple of trees that were lost, but apart from that, it’s pretty much the same”.

And while McIlroy will be teeing-up in The Masters for an 18th occasion his appearance this week in Houston will be a first in 11-years.

“Yeah, good to be back. As you said, it’s been 11 years since I was here”, he said.

It was usually the week directly before the Masters tournament and now it’s two weeks before.

Yeah, I’ve watched this tournament the last couple years, especially since it moved to this date instead of the fall, and felt like it was a golf course that would be right up my alley and would suit my game and suit my style of play.

“Good to get a look at the golf course the last couple days. Yeah, excited to just sort of just keep going, you know. It’s been a great start to the season for me and I want to continue that”.

 



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