Relaxed Rory ready to rumble

Rory McIlroy will go into tomorrow’s opening round at the Masters feeling at one with his new clubs and is ready to go toe-to-toe with Tiger Woods and anyone else who cares to challenge him at Augusta National.

So much has been made about McIlroy’s change in equipment for the 2013 season, checking out with Titleist and cashing in with Nike, and poor results during four of his first six tournament starts of the campaign have led many to believe the switch in clubs and ball has been the main cause of his poor scoring.

McIlroy, drawn tomorrow in the penultimate group of the day at 6:52pm Irish time alongside Keegan Bradley and Freddie Jacobson, has insisted all along that the equipment was not the cause of his dip in form, rather his swing, and a closing-round 66 and a second-place finish at the Valero Texas Open in San Antonio last Sunday reduced the number of doubters considerably.

Yesterday in Augusta, before a practice round ahead of the tournament in which a tie for 15th in 2011 is his best finish in four starts, the 23-year-old two-time major winner categorically dismissed the notion Nike just wasn’t doing it.

“I’m very comfortable and I’m 100% there,” McIlroy said. “I wanted to do it all (changing equipment) at the start of the year. I didn’t want to leave it for a while and say, ‘okay, I’ll put something in in dribs and drabs’. I just wanted to get it all in, get it all settled and have it over and done with, so eight, nine months down the line, I don’t have to say, ‘okay, right, I need to try to get this in or that in’.

“I just wanted to get it all in straightaway. I’m really comfortable with everything, and I feel like they are a part of me now and that’s the way a golf club should be. It’s definitely not the clubs, that’s for sure. That’s what I’ve found out over the past few weeks; it’s more me.”

Golf is indeed a selfish game, and for McIlroy, like his peers, it will always be about him. Mention Tiger Woods, the four-time Masters champion who has returned to the top of the world rankings at the Irishman’s expense this year thanks to three tournament wins and the fact is treated as neither a help nor a hindrance.

Was losing world number one status to Woods a weight off the shoulders? “No, not at all. It wasn’t anything to do with that. It was just about me gaining confidence because I was playing a bit better and my swing was in a better place. So nothing to do with that. Just me, progressing as a golfer this year, and ultimately building up to this tournament.”

For the second year in succession the resurgent Tiger and the heir apparent have been pitched in many people’s perceptions as the protagonists in a duel at Augusta National, but asked whether there was now a genuine rivalry with Woods, McIlroy replied in the negative, betraying, perhaps, more than a hint of the heroic status in which he still regards his nemesis.

“I don’t see myself a rival to Tiger or to anyone. Tiger obviously has been on Tour, for, I don’t know, what, 12 more years than me or something like that. So his record — when you speak of rivals, you tend to put rivals who have had similar success.

“He’s got 77 Tour wins; I’ve got six. He’s got 14 majors; I’ve got two. If I saw myself a rival to Tiger, I wouldn’t really be doing him much justice.”

You could almost imagine posters of Woods still adorning his walls, yet the pair have over the last 12 months formed a friendship forged over numerous rounds of competitive golf, aided by McIlroy joining him in the Nike stable and extending to some choice banter via text when Tiger ousted him as world number one by winning at Bay Hill last month.

Still, ask McIlroy for the Masters moments that stand out in his memory before he made his first entrance up Magnolia Drive and the Woods fan in the current PGA champion did not need much luring to the surface, citing two seminal moments in the American superstar’s career.

“2005, Tiger and (Chris) DiMarco,” he said. “Tiger holed the chip shot out on 16. That, and ‘97, those are the two that stand out in my mind more than anything else.”

Of course, 1997 is the year in which Woods, in his first major as a professional, took golf by storm and won the first of four Green Jackets by 12 shots.

McIlroy, confidence restored appears ready to make some history of his own.