Rory will be better armed for next major

CADDIE'S ROLE:After final-round setback Rory can add emotional experience to his course strategy acumen, writes COLIN BYRNE

WITH HOLE names like “White Dogwood”, “Flowering Crab Apple” and “Yellow Jasmine” everything was very much in order at Augusta National just as I had left it three years ago on my last visit. The sense of permanence and perfection gives the impression of being in golfing heaven. There is no doubt it is the most pristine course and clubhouse on the planet.

For a golfer playing the Masters, heaven can either gradually or quite rapidly start to feel more like hell.

It was hot and humid last Sunday at Augusta, unseasonably so and any golfer trying to steer his ball safely around Amen Corner was covered from head to toe in a slippery sweat that certainly didn’t feel like a heavenly temperature.

The airless melting pot at the bottom of the course was freshened only by the usual whimsical Augusta National wind. Not even the tranquil trickle of cool, clear water along Rae’s Creek could freshen you up in the sweat-box that was Augusta National last Sunday, particularly in an appropriately-named boiler suit, the compulsory attire for us caddies.

Of course if wind was just a cooling device, as it was for the patrons, then it was most welcome. As a competitor in the 75th Masters you would have sacrificed the air-conditioning for consistency while choosing what club to hit to hardening greens with an area the size of a modern Dublin apartment terrace on which to land your ball in order to get it to stop anywhere near the hole. Treachery awaited the slightest misjudgment, with either water or devious terrain waiting to welcome your ball and leave you feeling like shouting for mummy.

It is hard to play your way through the back nine of any major when you are in contention, it is particularly so on the back nine at Augusta. The one big advantage for the partisan patrons outside the ropes was they had only one fellow countrymen to support – the Americans were not really in contention for this one. Tiger catapulted onto the leader board early with a swashbuckling front nine to give the home crowd something to holler about but realistically it was another Masters foreign shoot-out.

There was a change of guard last week with the younger players like Rory McIlroy, Charl Schwartzel and Jason Day, who had already experienced the nuances of the course a couple of times before and were starting to feel more comfortable dealing with the subtleties of the sometime-mysterious golf course.

There is a steep learning curve at the National, with no crash course to understanding it, only time and experience leads to knowing how to deal with the subtle nature of the course.

Rory appeared to have gone through his initiation period and got himself into an invincible position with a four-shot lead heading into the final showdown. His previous few trips around Augusta were starting to make sense – Rory was getting to grips with the vagaries of the Masters.

Of course its not easy to win your first major with a strong lead and it’s much better to be in the hunting pack with no expectation from the world adding extra pressure to the already charged atmosphere.

Unfortunately Rory didn’t cope too well. Was it pressure? Of course it was.

It was the easiest last day I remember at the Masters, with little wind, reasonably accessible pins and putting surfaces that didn’t look like polished marble. The scores from the chasing pack reflected this with a crowd-pleasing birdie fest on the back nine. By his own admission the wunderkind from Holywood reflected that he just didn’t have the experience necessary to steer him around the back nine last Sunday. He didn’t need to go crazy to win, he just needed to limit the damage and I would hope after his unfortunate final-round nightmare he will add emotional experience to the course strategy acumen he has gleaned over the past couple of years.

It’s hard to explain how the last round of a major tournament works and what it is that keeps a player performing. Schwartzel, who came into contention very much under the radar, hit two bad shots in his final winning round of 66. Off the first bad approach shot he chipped in on the first hole and it seems like he fed off this momentum for the rest of the day.

No matter how good a player you are you need something to go your way in order to win. His only other mistake, which he didn’t make amends for, was a three putt on the fourth hole. Beyond that he picked a very good day for his game to fall into shape. Schwartzel capturing the 75th Masters title means non-Americans hold all four major titles.

We were all hoping for Rory to be the non-American to add to the other three major titles but instead it was the young, but slightly more experienced major player, the 26-year-old South African who bulldozed his way into the green jacket with four birdies to finish his round.

Augusta was a heavenly place for Schwartzel to play golf last Sunday and for poor Rory it must have seemed like hell.

Such are the emotions of playing the final round of the Masters with expectation of victory resting upon your young shoulders. He will be better armed for his next major assault.

Well done, Charl.