The final pairing with Bryson DeChambeau.
“I had a feeling this would be the hardest thing I would have to deal with that day, Bryson himself,” McIlroy said this during a surprise appearance on the Shotgun Start podcast on Tuesday“And just the way that we’re polar opposites in the way we approach the game. I felt like he would have some of the crowd, and I would have some of the crowd, and just kind of have to deal with that.”
McIlroy, during the 40-minute interviewrecalled a conversation with his sports psychologist, Dr. Bob Rotella, near the caddy area at Augusta National before McIlroy warmed up for the final round.
“How are you feeling today?” Rotella asked his client.
To which McIlroy replied, “I feel good. I feel good about my stuff. … The only thing that makes me uncomfortable is just the combination.”
Rotella’s response, according to McIlroy: “Well, just make him invisible.”
“And I said,” McIlroy added. ”Well, what do you mean?’ And he says, ‘Just don’t go along with it, don’t look at him, just get lost in your own little world. You have Harry next to you, let him be your companion, for example, and just get lost in that world.” And that’s what I tried to do.”
DeChambeau, who led by one shot through two holes before shooting 75 for fifth place, noted after the round that there was only silence between he and McIlroy.
“I haven’t talked to me once all day,” DeChambeau told reporters as McIlroy prepared for a playoff with Justin Rose. “He was just focused, I think. But it’s not me.”
“I felt like that was the biggest barrier between me and winning the Masters that day,” McIlroy continued, “and once it was clear that wasn’t going to be the biggest barrier, I made myself the biggest barrier.”
McIlroy added: “There’s nothing about that day that I would want to go back.”
McIlroy discussed various topics with hosts Brendan Porath, Andy Johnson, Kevin Van Valkenburg and producer PJ Clark (the boys also did a nearly four-hour pod discussing McIlroy’s win in the Masters), including a few items he’s received since capturing his first green jacket and completing his career grand slam.
One of these was a handwritten note that Jack Nicklaus placed in his new Champion’s Room locker. McIlroy flew straight from the Australia Open last week to spend a few days at Augusta National.
The other was an early Christmas present from McIlroy’s caddie, Harry Diamond: an Augusta National scorecard signed by the other five members of the career-slam club.
“He brought this to me with a Sharpie and said, ‘Do you want to sign it?’” McIlroy said. “And I said, ‘Absolutely not. I just hope I don’t have to sign Scottie next year.'”
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