<p>Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland plays a stroke from the No. 4 tee during the second round of the 2024 Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club, Friday, April 12, 2024.</p>
Rory McIlroy needs one of the greatest miracles in Masters history to complete the Grand Slam this week, but he still believes he has "half a chance" to come from ten shots off the lead and don the green jacket.
The Holywood star failed to make a birdie in a major round for only the third time in his career (and the first time since 2016), carding a five-over 77 to slip to 35th on four-over-par.
He was playing alongside world number one Scottie Scheffler, and the Texan remains the man to beat after he carded a 72 in the worst of the windy conditions — three shots better than the average score — to share the lead with Bryson DeChambeau and Max Homa on six under.
They lead by two strokes from Denmark's Nicolai Hojgaard and by three from Australia's Cameron Davis and Collin Morikawa, with Sweden's Ludvig Aberg four behind on two-under after a best-of-the-afternoon 69 on his major debut.
"Tough day, really tough day," said McIlroy, who bogeyed the fifth and seventh before he made a double-bogey six at the 11th, where, after a long wait on the tee and in the fairway, he dumped his approach in the pond left of the green.
"Just hard to make a score and just sort of trying to make as many pars as possible. I felt like I did okay. I made that bogey on 14, and even just to par the last four holes and get in the clubhouse and have a tee time tomorrow, I'm sort of pretty happy with.
"Yeah, just a really tough day. Scoring was very difficult. Yeah, just one of those days that couldn't -- I mean, most of the field couldn't really get anything going. It was just a matter of trying to hang in there as best you could."
It was such a brutally tough day as the wind gusted to 39 mph and the course dried out that the last few groups, including McIlroy's, took six hours to get around.
"It felt long, yeah," McIlroy confessed. "My golf swing felt horrific for the last six or seven holes, just from sitting around. Especially that 11th hole — 11 it felt like it took an hour to play that hole.
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"Yeah, it was stop and start, hard to get into a rhythm with the conditions and obviously how slow the play was as well."
Shane Lowry, tied for 35th on three-over after rounds of 73 and 74, described trying to judge the wind as a lottery.
"Yeah, it's hard," McIlroy said. "Mentally, it's a grind because you just have to try to commit as best you can to the shot that you're trying to play.
"One second, you'll have a shot that's playing 150, and then if the wind does something different, the shot could be playing 180. It could be a 30-yard difference.
"You have to commit to trying to play the right shot, but then you also have to hit it at the right time as well. So pretty tricky."
While he's made some great weekend comebacks in his career, coming from 11 behind to win the Wells Fargo Championship in 2010 and 10 behind to win the Dubai Desert Classic just a few months ago, he admitted this is a huge task.
But when asked if he could make a run, he said: "I think so. I won from 10 back in Dubai at the start of the year. But obviously the Dubai Desert Classic and the Masters are two very different golf tournaments.
"We'll see. Hopefully the conditions are a little better tomorrow. Yeah, I still think I can go out tomorrow and shoot a low one, get back into red numbers, and have half a chance going into Sunday."
Paul McGinley did not sound optimistic in his post-round analysis on Golf Channel.
"His iron play was poor," McGinley said. "That's what's really been off here…I hate to see it happen. He's not playing very well. That's the bottom line. Players come in and out of form, and Rory's just not on his form at this time."
The Dubliner was hugely impressed again by Scheffler's control from tee to green.
"What I saw is somebody who's on track to be the best wedge player, best short iron player, best mid-iron player in the history of the strokes play era," he said. "That sort of territory belonged to Steve Stricker and Tiger Woods, I'm talking about 50-to-125 yards.
"Stricker gets the nod…he had five feet over the Tour average. That's like Usain Bolt racing Danny DeVito, that's
how good he was with a wedge. [Scheffler] is on pace to be the best wedge player the Tour has ever seen."