This teacher is now the biggest Rory Mcilroy test

Auguta, Ga. – Rory Mcilroy leads the Masters with two shots on Bryson Dechambeau, but that’s not the one who will play in the final round of the tournament. Sunday in Augusta National will be McILROY against Mcilroy.

“I will just have to establish myself and really try to keep in my small bubble and keep my head low,” he said after shooting a third 66 round to enter the 12-to-par.

On Saturday it will be the first time that Mcilroy will have an advantage of 54 holes in a larger from the 2014 PGA championship in Valhalla, his last victory of the championship. He is playing on a golf course that is the site of one of the worst collapses of his career: the Masters of 2011, where on Sunday morning he held an advantage of four shots. And he will be coupled with the man who came out at the top while he has crumbled in his latest great crack at the US Open in Pinehurst – Dehambambaau. The Masters is also the main championship that would complete Mcilroy Grand Slam’s career.

That’s all a control of reality, if Mcilroy likes to admit it or not.

Mcilroy knows what awaits us. He will return to his hotel room tonight, he will strive stronger that he may not look at his phone and look at an episode of “Bridgerton” before trying to fall asleep. Then he will approach the first T -shirt by Augusta National at 14:30 and a subconscious row of obstacles will be ready to take sides in front of him. It’s all in science. When the mind is in situations that also resemble a painful past that take place again in the future, it is designed to raise red flags.

“It is human nature. We have been designed to survive. So, oh – do not do it! This endangers you, so do it instead. It is as if it were a defense mechanism. It is exactly what it is,” said Mcilroy, when the concept of “scar fabric” discusses in March in March Atletico.

Tuesday, Mcilroy has revisited the topic alone. Sometimes, like humans, we behave in strange ways to protect us. It is in our nature to fear what has hurt us. Mcilroy is not shy that he felt on that type of golf barriers, and yes – they returned to bite him.

“It happens in all social classes,” Mcilroy said. “At a certain point in someone’s life, someone does not want to fall in love because they don’t want to break their hearts. People, I think, instinctively as human beings sometimes we retain because of fear, whether it is a conscious decision or a subconscious decision, and I think I was doing it a little on the Golf course for a few years.”

Rory Mcilroy will try to win his first teachers on Sunday. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

There was a period in Mcilroy’s great career, from 2014 to 2020, where he says he was dealing with majors like all the other tournaments, when in reality they are very different, both in the tests that present both the expectations that derive from it. So, in fact, Mcilroy admitted to adopting an approach based on the progress for the first six years of his 11 -year -old drought of championship. He played well at the majors, however-his 21 top-10 finals in Major from 2015 to 2024 are the most always for a player in 10 years without winning the lack of trophies could be at least partially rooted in his mental strategy.

Many high -level psychologists aim to teach athletes the ability of acceptance. If it does not submit completely to the fact that being in the largest phases of a sport or profession could lead to a public disappointment – or worse, more than one – it is impossible not to operate for prevention. This is how the brain works, but the best athletes are those who don’t let him go there. If you do, the attention necessary to perform the best becomes extremely difficult.

“If you present yourself in a place that has not done a little inner work to do, ok, I am willing to accept the fact that there is the same risk if no longer at risk this time compared to the last time, then neurologically my brain is wired to provide me anxiety for this experience”, says the psychologist of performance Raymond Prior, who has trained more samples of Master. “This is a neurological not negotiable for us.”

Mcilroy has been increasingly vulnerable and open on his mental preparation for these moments. He said Atletico For a story that was published at the beginning of this week that in 2024 he experienced hypnosis. He spoke to the championship of the players of the management of his pre-sell anxiety.

Mcilroy is actively working with the sports psychologist Bob Rotella, who is on the spot of the Masters. Mcilroy has “clichés mantras” scribbled in the back of his Yardage book as a mental reminder this week, and spoke with Rotella during the tournament.

All internal work is added to one thing: the search for a feeling, a mentality that only Mcilroy can identify, but for him represents success.

“If I can go home tonight and look at myself in the mirror before going to bed and being like, that’s how I want to hear when I play golf, who, for me, is a victory,” Mcilroy said on Saturday evening.

So far, Mcilroy has achieved that feeling believing in his own resilience. Has it been demolished before, to St. Andrews and Los Angeles Country Club and Pinehurst in the last three years and guess a little? Every time, he got up. “In recent years I have had the opportunity to win some of the largest golf tournaments in the world and it didn’t happen. But life goes on. You will dust yourself and go again,” he said Tuesday.

For Mcilroy, remembering those very real experiences, and in particular the manifestations of strength that have been after them, is the key to ordering through the alarm bells that his brain is wired to provide.

With all the noise tomorrow he will bring, spotting that mentality will be a high task. There will be much more in the game in addition to the only improvement of the Dendhambeau score.

(Photo above: Andrew Redington / Getty Images)