Back to back! Rory adds a second Masters to his major collection

50.875 - 75.853 Rich Beem

I wish it wouldn't be so stressful. I wish that there'd be a clear-cut winner with about six holes to go. I'm tired of this stress and stuff because it's just like, you know, you have so many different players that can win it, and yet I think that inside of us, you know, like we're rooting for one guy because we've seen him fail so many times. Like, no, don't give this one away again. No, no, no.

75.893 - 86.373 Rich Beem

You were up by six with, you know, 36 to go, but... You know, it's just extraordinary. I like what he had to say. He says, I thought that winning the Masters first time was hard. He says, no, just winning the Masters is hard. And it is.

86.874 - 115.729 Rich Beem

I thought that was a very human reaction to everything that he was going through out there because it's not just winning the Masters any tournament, but I think you just, you know the history, you know what it, He's such a historian. You'd think that he's thought of every single shot that the famous players or winners have hit. And he knows what's out there. With so many players within...

116.03 - 121.656 Rich Beem

three shots of the lead going into the second nine yesterday afternoon. It could have gone any different way. Yeah. But it didn't.

122.056 - 129.343 Jamie

It didn't. And, you know, Colty, you put us through the ringer again, maybe not quite to the extent of last year, but never makes it easy, does Rory McIlroy?

247.336 - 267.245 Jamie

It's all good. America. Beamer, how do you think Rory will have been feeling when that six-shot lead, poof, has evaporated on Saturday night? And then yesterday as well, when he bogeys the sixth. Cam Young's yet to putt. But at that stage, at that specific point, he's three shots back. He must be thinking, please not again. Don't let me throw another one away.

268.246 - 301.388 Rich Beem

Um... I don't think he thinks that way. I think he, you know, especially the six-stroke lead after Saturday was gone, I think that he's so good at just figuring out a way to reset. Yeah. You know, and I know it's down deep somewhere. It probably bothers him, but you ask anybody, you know. leads, everything's meant to be broken. You know, history's made to be broken.

301.788 - 313.909 Rich Beem

Records are made to be broken, blah, blah. If, you know, Andrew and I were out playing one time and we had a massive lead at some point in time and then it went away, well, guess what? Here we go. Yeah. You have to deal with the cards that don't.

313.889 - 335.171 Andrew Coltart

I mean, that would be totally different if it was 12 months ago. Yeah, yeah. You know, that would be, arguably, would be career-defining and career-ending almost. Yeah. But because he already had the jacket... Yeah. for him it was palatable and he could handle it and oh well, I mean he prides himself on his resilience.

335.732 - 341.328 Jamie

I was about to say, that's his main, don't get me wrong, he's a fabulous golfer, for me his main strength is almost his resilience.

578.675 - 602.033 Rich Beem

And if you think about it, and I hate to bring up money, but I think that's the one thing. There's certain guys that just don't need to wake up and want to do it every single day because they could walk away and be happy and healthy for the rest of their days and beyond, generational stuff. And yet, you know, Rory wakes up every day and says, all right, let's go and do this.

602.173 - 611.297 Rich Beem

And listen, you get punched in the face more than you punch back in this game, in this sport. And he still wakes up every single day saying, all right, let's go do it again.

611.615 - 633.403 Jamie

And even within the context purely of golf, Beamer makes the football analogy, but Spieth bursts on the scene and rattles off three majors in next to no time, and Brooks Koepka comes in and does the same thing. But Rory has been at the very, very top of the game, as I said, for 17 years. I think people sometimes forget just how extraordinary that is, how rare that is.

633.383 - 661.45 Andrew Coltart

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, just to echo what Rich has said, you know, golf allows that ability. Look, we've spent the last 10 years still expecting Tiger Woods to be able to play and come back and not really sort of realise that, you know, the guy's touching 50 and he's, you know, again, the body just gives up. Rory was just an unbelievably gifted golfer

661.43 - 692.082 Andrew Coltart

arguably it was such a shame that there was an 11 year gap between majors. But that's because, again, that mountain to climb was his Everest, and it was incredibly difficult to climb, and it took him 11 years to do that, because it's damn difficult. But yeah, he's around, he's arguably in his golfing prime, And there's definitely many more majors still to come.

1174.614 - 1199.34 Rich Beem

You know, it's... it's heartbreaking to watch justin rose go through that and and there there is a little bit of rory mcelroy 12 months ago dilemma like are you ever going to win this thing and i don't care if he's 45 or whatnot justin rose is still one of the best in the game age is just a number for him because he looks after himself

1199.32 - 1219.995 Rich Beem

You know, much has been made about the facilities that he travels with, so on and so forth. I mean, he puts himself in the best possible position to win every tournament he tees it up in. When he drives down Magnolia Lane, he's a lot like Fred Couples, where it's just like, oh, my gosh, here we go again. He gets all those tingles going.

1219.975 - 1237.859 Rich Beem

I guess there's a scenario where you can want it so badly that it's probably never going to happen. And I don't say that it won't happen for Justin Rose. I don't believe that one bit because there's no doubt in my mind that he'll figure out something again next year to put himself in position.

1239.28 - 1264.552 Rich Beem

When he made the turn and he went down 10 and he backed off the second shot at 10 and then he backed off the second shot at 11... you could kind of sense there was something in there that He knows where he's at. He knows the position he's at. He knows he's got seven holes to go. How is he going to figure out how to pull this off? For me, there was a sense of like, he's hesitating.

1264.793 - 1290.567 Rich Beem

He's not continuing to charge, you know, down these fairways like he did last year, making 10 birdies. He made five birdies on the front nine or the first night yesterday. And then, and then, and again, nobody expected to see him make five birdies on the second night yesterday, but, But I felt like the backing off the shots on 10 and 11, there's something in there. It wasn't the wind.

1639.847 - 1664.27 Rich Beem

But that took so much steam, you know, out of him. So much wind out of his sails that I don't know how... you know, how the fates of this world work, but I mean, to not, to only make one birdie, and it was the last, it was 15 yesterday, and he probably played that hole as worse as he played any hole. Hit out to the right, hits a tree, ends up still right, you know, and then figures it.

1664.41 - 1666.575 Andrew Coltart

That's what cost him. I think as well, though,

1667.399 - 1688.203 Andrew Coltart

how the tournament unfolded helped him, because I'm not sure he believed he could ever get close, but because Rory didn't run away with it in round three, didn't extend his lead and actually fell back, then you almost saw the field, particularly Sheffield, you know, become reinvigorated and like, hang on a second, this is still alive, we've got a chance.

1688.223 - 1698.294 Andrew Coltart

And he fed off that and put himself into a position that you know, just waiting for the error, unfortunately, that didn't come from his point of view.

1698.314 - 1717.276 Jamie

All sport, not just golf, all sport loves to have rivalries. And, you know, whether it's Nicholas and Palmer or then it became Nicholas and Watson, Woods and Nicholson, perhaps a one-sided rivalry in that case. But, you know, how much would we love to have in golf? You know, at the start, this is Rory McIlroy and Scotty Sheffield going toe-to-toe.

1772.8 - 1783.139 Andrew Coltart

Yeah. Well, I mean, is Tommy third? No, he lost. It's up for debate, but what I was saying is... No, we're talking facts.

1783.159 - 1785.122 Jamie

Who is number three?

1785.482 - 1803.87 Rich Beem

It's number three. So that's really funny. We're all in the golf world. Who is number three? They're a clear-cut one and two, and then it's everybody else. Not taking anything away from everybody else, but you're right. I mean, Rory and Scotty Scheffler,

1803.85 - 1824.422 Rich Beem

With the exception of Scotty on Saturday, they look like they were race cars that couldn't quite figure out how to separate the stumps of the pack and get on that straightaway and just let it loose. It looked like they were just... There was something wrong with their engines, and yet they still were where they should have ended up.

1824.442 - 1842.21 Andrew Coltart

I mean, you know, Scotty's been world's number one for 152 consecutive weeks now. You know, there needs to be a jostling of positions. For it to be called a rivalry. For it to be called a rivalry. He separated himself for the pack for the last couple of years, and it's been really disappointing.

1969.794 - 1975.579 Jamie

I think he did it on Thursday and Friday. I don't think he did the best stuff on Thursday and Friday. No, I know.

1975.619 - 1977.801 Rich Beem

But he got the most out of his game.

1977.781 - 1995.182 Andrew Coltart

To me, he only really hit one really foolish shot, and that was an 11, and that gets an awful lot of people. That was an 11 on Saturday. I don't know how he thought that was a good shot. How he thought that was a good shot. The choice of shot to draw it into that, I don't know. It's a fade all day.

1995.222 - 1998.706 Rich Beem

A good shot would have been to the right edge of the green, not to the left edge of the green.

1998.786 - 2013.002 Andrew Coltart

A good shot would have been not in the water. He knew he was battling this draw, and yet he managed to manufacture out a major win. And that's the first time I've seen Rory...

2117.725 - 2139.265 Rich Beem

He left himself an eight-footer, but if you watch that putt going down the hill, I mean, that looked like Andrew and I leaving a bar on a Friday night, you know, in Scotland someplace. I mean, it was just wobbling all over. It's not that he didn't hit a good putt. It's just that thing was just like this and didn't go in. If it goes in... I think there probably is a little bit different.

2139.706 - 2155.406 Rich Beem

He's probably going to have a little talk to himself walking from seven green to eight tee box. Okay, enough of that. Quit making silly mistakes. Don't put, you know, don't short shot yourself. I mean, but the second shot on seven, I think ultimately was the shot that just took it out of him.

2155.426 - 2161.776 Jamie

He's racking up some CV in the majors, isn't he? In terms of top tens, and you feel it's just a matter of time if he keeps knocking on the door.

2161.916 - 2178.204 Andrew Coltart

Yeah, I think that's why Rich's comment there is absolutely true. You know, he's been running up in an Open Championship in 2022 to Cam Smith. He's finished third, I think, at PGA. He's finished fourth. He's finished seventh. You know what I mean?

2178.264 - 2182.692 Jamie

These aren't flukes. If you keep doing it in majors, that tells you you're a major standard player.