The Masters Tournament 2024: Rory McIlroy Struggles Against the Wind and Augusta

Rory McIlroy kept struggeling on day 2 at The Masters Tournament 2024. But in the windy conditions he was not the only one, with only eight players posting a round under par. Yet a round of 77 to follow his first round of 71 shots positions McIlroy only in the middle of the field on T35. Ten shots behind the leaders it doesn’t look likely that he will be able to fulfill his dream of a career grand slam, but McIlroy is well able to perform some golf magic.

Rory McIlroy having a hard time in round 2 of The Masters Tournament 2024

He couldn’t find that magic on Friday though with a birdie free round. Two bogeys on 5 and 7 marked an already difficult start to his round that only got worse when he entered Amen Corner. On hole 11 McIlroy’s second vanished into Rae’s Creek. And even though he brought his fourth shot seven feet to the hole a gave himself a chance to save a bogey, his ball rolled over the corner of the hole, causing a double bogey for the Northern Irishman. He got unscathed through 12 and 13 but lost another shot on 14. After that he made it without further lost shots to the clubhouse.

Rory McIlroy on his second round at The Masters Tournament: “Really Tough Day”

Q. Rory, can you give us your thoughts on the round and the conditions today.

RORY MCILROY: Tough day, really tough day. Just hard to make a score and just sort of trying to make as many pars as possible. I felt like I did okay. I made that bogey on 14, and even just to par the last four holes and get in the clubhouse and have a tee time tomorrow, I’m sort of pretty happy with.

Yeah, just a really tough day. Scoring was very difficult. Yeah, just one of those days that couldn’t — I mean, most of the field couldn’t really get anything going. It was just a matter of trying to hang in there as best you could.

Q. Could you give us your thoughts on just how long your round took today.

RORY MCILROY: It felt long, yeah. My golf swing felt horrific for the last six or seven holes, just from hitting around. Especially that 11th hole, 11 it felt like it took an hour to play that hole.

Yeah, it was stop and start, hard to get into a rhythm with the conditions and obviously how slow the play was as well.

Q. Rory, how much of a battle is it between your mental and your physical game when it’s so slow, when it’s so windy? There’s so many second callings of shots. What is that part of the test like?

RORY MCILROY: Yeah, it’s hard. Mentally it’s a grind because you just have to try to commit as best you can to the shot that you’re trying to play. One second you’ll have a shot that’s playing 150, and then if the wind does something different, the shot could be playing 180. It could be a 30-yard difference.

Just really hard to — you have to commit to trying to play the right shot, but then you also have to hit it at the right time as well. So pretty tricky.

Q. You’ve done 10 shots back in your career, Wells Fargo, it was a long time ago. I think you were 11 back with a whole round to go in 2022 and you finished second, gave it a run. Do you think there’s still a run from 10 back?

RORY MCILROY: I think so. I won from 10 back in Dubai at the start of the year. But obviously the Dubai Desert Classic and the Masters are two very different golf tournaments.

We’ll see. Hopefully the conditions are a little better tomorrow. Yeah, I still think I can go out tomorrow and shoot a low one, get back into red numbers, and have half a chance going into Sunday.