On Sunday evening, with the 2022 green jacket hanging in the balance, Rory McIlroy delivered one of the great shots in Masters history. Full stop.
Marooned in the bunker to the right of the 18th green and needing to post a number, McIlroy flicked it into the face of the putting surface and watched as it trickled with a sense of certain destiny toward the bottom of the cup. You’ve watched it a million times. Now watch it a million and one:
As it turned out, McIlroy’s heroics weren’t enough. Scheffler would hold on to win by three strokes, resigning the instantly iconic shot to the overflowing bin of “what-if” Masters moments. But there was another agent at play undermining McIlroy’s moment of golf genius. His name?
Faldo. Nick Faldo.
As the Scheffler-Smith pairing finished up play at the 13th, Sir Nick spilled the beans on toast, and by the time the broadcast swung back to 18 to show the footage, the entire world knew what was coming. In the hours that followed, Faldo took his share of stick on social media—some of it fair, some of it not—but after 48 hours of abuse, he was forced to join the Dan Patrick Show on Tuesday to address the spoiler and regain control of the capital-N Narrative. Here’s how it happened, according to 006.
That was a rookie mistake,” Faldo, the lead golf analyst for CBS since 2006, admitted. He then went on to explain how between the gallery roars and the Jim Nantz nagging and the sweet, syrupy visions of Rory donning the green jacket, that he just couldn’t keep it bottled up. He had to share it with the world, and share it he did, like a Mentos in a Coke bottle.
“I’ve been up there for 18-odd years,” he concluded. “That was my first c***-up.”
We’re not sure we’d go so far as to call it Faldo’s first “c***-up” (his term, not our’s), but at this point you gotta feel for the guy … right? Hello? Anyone?
