Rory ready for Major moment

It’s 14 years since a European donned one of Augusta National’s famous green jackets and was proclaimed Masters champion.

And in a year of significant anniversaries for European golf on this hallowed golfing ground, Sunday night would be the ideal time we, on this side of the Atlantic, got to celebrate once again.

It was not so long ago that European Tour members won six Majors in-a-row, starting with Graeme McDowell at the 2010 US Open and ending with Darren Clarke at the 2011 British Open, yet even then it was a South African, Charl Schwartzel, who claimed the Masters.

So there would be no better time than 2013, 30 years on from Seve Ballesteros’s second green jacket, 25 years on from Sandy Lyle’s win and 20 since Bernhard Langer’s triumph, to end a Euro drought stretching back to Jose Maria’s Olazabal’s second win in 1999.

Fantasy and reality, though, are very different realms and in a 93-man field led by world No 1 and four-time Masters champion Tiger Woods, a man driven to end a Major drought of his own after stalling at 14 back in 2008, they may appear quite far apart.

Yet Rory McIlroy has some business of his own to attend to this week and he leads a very credible European charge, having answered an awful lot questions about his readiness to contend in 2013.

It is all relative of course, but at the risk of sounding faintly ridiculous there has not been much for McIlroy to celebrate since he inked a 10-year equipment deal with Nike that gave him the sort of financial security several European nations would be only too pleased to possess.

Make that not much form for McIlroy to celebrate.

Undercooked through lack of tournament play and troubled by a faulty swing, McIlroy made for a desolate figure as he opened his season with a missed cut in Abu Dhabi — the week he switched to Nike clubs and ball — followed up with a first-round matchplay defeat to Shane Lowry in Tucson and then stormed off the course mid-second round at the Honda Classic, citing toothache.

Then came the first positive sign, a fortnight later at Doral, with a sparkling 65 to close the WGC-Cadillac Championship on a high, only to go into hiding again for another three weeks. No wonder there was more rustiness from McIlroy as he slumped to a tie for 45th at the Shell Houston. Little surprise that he blew off a charitable trip to Haiti in search of some tournament sharpness at the Valero Texas Open last week.

That was a late change of plan that paid off this time, his self-confessed need to be selfish vindicated by a second-placed finish and final-round 66 that sent the PGA Champion to Georgia in search of back-to-back Majors.

“Doral was the place where I felt like I turned the corner in terms of my golf swing,” McIlroy said. “I was feeling a little more comfortable with it there. Last week wasn’t about golf swing. It was just about getting competitive play. I felt like I accomplished that.

“Would anything less than a win be a disappointment this week? Yeah, it would be... every time you come here to Augusta, you’re wanting to win that green jacket, and every time that you don’t, it’s another chance missed, I guess.

“But if I’m sitting here on Sunday night and I’ve finished second or if I’ve given it a good run, you can’t be too disappointed because you’ve had a great tournament. But the ultimate goal is getting one of those jackets.”

McIlroy has had four missed chances at the Masters, but none will hurt as much as 2011 when his failure to close out a lead he had held for the first 63 holes was a crushing blow.

Those demons are gone now, softened by two subsequent Major victories.

McIlroy, spurred on by the loss of his world No 1 status to a resurgent Woods, has the game to conquer Augusta National. He always had. Now is the moment to close out what he could not do two years ago.

Woods will inevitably be his main rival, whether McIlroy regards him as such or not. He is tournament favourite given his four wins here and his three victories already on Tour this season, yet he has still to convince that he is ready to win his first Major since 2008.

Others will contend also, not least perennial competitor Phil Mickelson, nearly-man Adam Scott and a quartet of Englishmen in Luke Donald, Lee Westwood, Justin Rose and Ian Poulter who all have what it takes to win Majors but have, as yet, been unable to deliver.

McDowell follows hot on McIlroy’s heels as an in-form and confident Irish challenger while Pádraig Harrington has not ruled out hopes of adding to his three Major titles, driver problems aside.

It is at the other end of the equipment spectrum, of course, that is vexing most in the golf world with the game’s governing bodies at loggerheads with the PGA Tour and PGA of America over the question of whether to ban anchoring putters. A decision is due sooner rather than later but in the meantime the prospect of a Keegan Bradley or Webb Simpson, Scott or Ernie Els adding a green jacket to the prizes already won by long or belly putter users is sure to raise blood pressures on both sides of the argument.

McIlroy can save everybody’s fragile temperaments in that regards. It will need another big step up in form from his 66 in San Antonio but he has made those in the past and been rewarded.

This could be another of those moments.