Faxon on McIlroy's back-to-back Masters win, his elite skills and Scheffler's performance
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What insights did Brad Faxon share about Rory McIlroy's Masters victory?
Rory was doing his thing post-round and post-championship, and he gave our next guest a big shout-out on that green. Here he is from NBC, the Golf Channel longtime PGA Tour pro. There's Brad Faxon. That must have been cool facts. Rory giving you a shout-out on 18 there.
Very cool. It's been pretty impressive the last couple of years for Rory. Everybody involved, his team. I mean, seeing how long it took him to finally secure a Masters victory. And I thought one of the comments he made, actually... He said he really wanted to make sure people didn't think of this first win as a fluke or he wanted to make sure this was a validating last year's win. I think he put enormous pressure on himself going into Saturday's round. He had a six-shot lead. That was unprecedented. And he did it, you know, almost kind of smoke and mirrors. Didn't hit a lot of fairways. Hit less than half the fairways the first two days. And chipped and putted miraculously, really. Got himself out of jail.
He was making a ton of birdies, a ton of bogeys, which is kind of an exciting way to watch it. And, you know, when he said that about all of us, all the team, you know, we do a lot of stuff together in and around Rory all year long. And then when he... wins the Masters again, it was just superb.
Fax, where do you think his mindset was after giving up the lead on Saturday? As opposed to just saying to the media, I'm still in the lead, I'm still comfortable, where do you think he actually was? I mean, you probably really know where he was, but just give us some idea.
I don't think he was really comfortable. I think he knew, you know, he was getting away with some of the stuff. One of the statistics, he was playing the four par fives the first two days. He was seven under on the eight par fives without hitting one fairway. That doesn't happen very often there. His wedge game was taken over when he had missed the greens, putted some beautiful putts there as well. And I don't think he was secure with his swing. You know, it... Golf Channel or on NBC, when we do a broadcast, we have a site we visit called datagolf.com, and they provide us with all kinds of incredible statistics. And one of the links you can reach to is something called Pressure Tool, and it shows players in the past when they've been leading, how do they play versus the rest of the field.
And when you see this, inevitably, players never play as well. And I mean never play as well when they're in the lead. An exception would be Tiger Woods. And certainly Rory has had more experience than any players in that field leading. And even Rory got affected by that six-shot lead. And, you know, he went out again. And I said it. before last year, sleeping on the lead of a major championship is one of the hardest things to do in sports. You know, we're a four-day event like a cricket match. The test match is a five-day event. It's like a playoff series. You know, every single day you wake up is different. The amount of time you have to wait on a Sunday afternoon to go tee it up, right? You're playing a 245.
And for Rory, it was compounded by the fact that he hadn't won the Masters, he hadn't won the Grand Slam. And, you know, you're sitting there all by yourself Sunday morning in the house where you're renting. What do you do with that time? It's hard.
Yeah, it must be. And it's amazing. We said it earlier this hour, you know, 53 weeks ago, his reputation was a guy that can't get it done there, probably never will get it done there. And now 53 weeks later, he's a two-time champ and he's, you know, he's one of these all-time great Masters champions. And the door has completely swung. Like it was 11 years of why can't he win. Not that he wasn't close. We know that he was very close many, many times. but it has completely opened the door to projecting maybe double-digit majors. Maybe he doubles down on the slam. Where is your prediction for the next eight to ten years on Rory?
Yeah, it's a good question. He's 37 years old. He's been playing professional golf now since he was 17 years old.
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