Rory McIlroy ready to master Doral’s Blue Monster

He is the game’s dominant player, its poster boy to the masses. Rory McIlroy, though, found some solitude in his final practice round ahead of the $9 million WGC-Cadillac Championship here when, up bright and early, he played alone with just his trusted caddie JP Fitzgerald as company. The calm before the storm? More like cleaning the slate to start anew, after last week’s missed cut in the Honda Classic.

Yet, as McIlroy pointed out, it is from failures rather than wins that he has most learned.

“I don’t feel like you learn that much from your wins or success, I think you learn about yourself and you learn you can handle the pressure or you do certain things under pressure that you mightn’t have done before. During your losses is where you learn the most,” he said.

Meltdown

Of course, the most dramatic example of that learning from mistakes came in 2011. In April, he experienced a final-round meltdown in the US Masters. In June, he was striding away from forlorn pursuers in capturing the US Open at Congressional. “I’ve always said that was a huge learning curve for me. I took a lot from that day, just how I approach final rounds, and especially when you’re in the lead and there’s pressure. You learn more from your mistakes because, you make a mistake, you try to make sure that you don’t make it again.”

Not that McIlroy has made too many mistakes on the golf course in recent years in imposing himself as the undisputed world number one, some distance ahead of Bubba Watson in the rankings.

The missed cut in the Honda Classic – his first weekend off since missing out at the Irish Open last May – was, we can presume, a blip coming after a three-week lay-off that also included time spent in the chambers of Dublin’s Four Courts.

A rare missed cut for McIlroy, it was the result of a rusty game and windy conditions, said the world number one.

“After coming off a three-week break, you never quite know how your game’s going to be,” he said.

Before that break, he’d signed off with a win in the Dubai Desert Classic, a sequence of finishing either first or second in his last six events on the European Tour.

McIlroy’s response to missing the cut in the Honda Classic has been to use it as a positive. He spent the weekend practising – undeterred by the weather disruptions at a tournament where Pádraig Harrington ultimately triumphed – and then went out and shot a round of 63 to win the pro-member at famed Seminole on Monday. It didn’t take him long to get back to winning ways.

“I could have approached it two ways,” he said of reacting to the missed cut. “I could have got really down on myself and wondered, ‘where did that come from?’ or look and it and say, ‘okay, this was the first event from a three-week break and there was a few things in my game that weren’t quite sharp enough’ . . . sometimes you need a kick in the backside to make you realise what you need to do. So, it wasn’t a bad thing. I was disappointed but I feel like it’s given me clarity on what I needed to do with my game going into the next few weeks.

Masters build-up

“It wasn’t a bad week to see where I was. I identified a few things I needed to work on over the weekend and I feel like I have addressed those.

“At least I know going into this week where my game is. Even if things maybe don’t go my way at some point during the round, I’ll know how to manage it a little bit better.”

Of course, much of what McIlroy does is actually focused on building up to Augusta.

Arnold Palmer, who was present here for the official ribbon-cutting of his new villa on site at Doral, believes it to be only a matter of time before McIlroy were to get his hands on a green jacket of his own. As Arnie put it, "I don't think there's any question about it that Rory will be at the Champions Dinner one day."

Focus

For now, McIlroy’s focus – just like the other 73 players in the field – is one of conquering a Blue Monster course made tougher by Gil Hanse’s redesign, where

Patrick Reed

triumphed a year ago and made his comments about feeling like a world’s top five player.

Now, Reed believes he is one of the genuine rivals to McIlroy on tour. “At the end of the day, come down to Sunday, if I do everything well I should have a chance. I would love to get up to that position where I am a true rival against him, battling it out one versus two. I’ve got some ways to go, a couple more spots to move up,” said Reed, now ranked 15th in the official world rankings.

Shane Lowry, who has added the Arnold Palmer Invitational in a fortnight's time onto his schedule, and Graeme McDowell along with McIlroy make up a three-strong Irish contingent in the 74-man field.