That is Tiger Woods at Augusta, we are talking about. The golfing equivalent of Pele at the Maracana, Pavarotti at La Scala, Elvis in Vegas. When the world No 1 steps on to the manicured turf he has all but owned for the last dozen years it should not be possible for any other player to intensify the spotlight. Particularly when he is a Augusta rookie and, get this, he is not even American.

Rory is in fine form coming into the 2009 US Masters

But such has the been the hype surrounding Rory McIlroy’s debut at the Masters this week that Woods’s decision is perfectly understandable. As McIlroy himself acknowledged when arriving here yesterday. “It’s just not going to happen,“ he said with a tone that was part resigned, part relieved. “If I played with him there’d be too much going on. It’s extra stuff that Tiger doesn’t really want to deal with either. It’s just extra attention you don’t want.”

Things have clearly changed since Mark O’Meara partnered the young Ulsterman in the first round in Dubai in January and was so impressed by what he saw that he told McIlroy he would fix up an Augusta three-ball with his great friend. As far as Rory is concerned, everything has changed.

In the three months since that Desert Classic he was destined to win, McIlroy has gone from having a boy with all the potential – indeed from being as O’Meara announced “a kid with a better swing than Tiger at the same age” – to an established member of the world’s top 20. And as daft as it seems to suggest so, Woods may even have a ulterior motive for agreeing to call off the get-to-know-you date. When O’Meara first mooted the idea, McIlroy was nothing more a curio. Now he is nothing less than a rival.

He happens to be a rival with a live chance as well, if the word of Padraig Harrington is taken as being rather more than an overly generous compliment to a countryman. When asked whether McIlroy could become just the second golfer to win on his Masters debut, Harrington took time out from his own meticulous preparations in his pursuit of a third successive major to reply: “Yes, I actually do believe it is possible for Rory to do it, to emulate Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979. He has a good caddie on the bag in JP Fitzgerald, who has been here numerous times. There won’t be a pin position or a shot JP won’t know about.”

In that short statement Harrington revealed what was always going to be the major concern with the McIlroy challenge here this week. Granted, he has the game suited to Augusta with that length, that natural draw, that high ball-flight and he also has a short-game that seems appropriately god-given to cope with the hellish demands of these infamous greens in golfing heaven. Yet what McIlroy so obviously does not have, cannot have, is what every Masters expert worthy of their Amens claims he must have: the experience. It is surely like tackling the Cape Horn without a salt-bitten skipper.

Well, maybe and maybe not. In his short career, McIlroy has already bashed down enough barriers to realise that the impossible is, in fact, only the implausible and as avowed “Tiger anorak” who can recite the numbers of the record-breaking triumph of the 1997 Masters, he also appreciates that the Augusta National is not averse to staging the occasional miracle. It will simply take a case of quick-learning of which those young Oxbridge freaks would find mind-boggling.

Or then, McIlroy could draw from the “loosest goose in the west” inspiration of Fuzzy and turn up on Thursday swinging like he always swung, without a care in the world, without a fear in Georgia. That is plainly how McIlroy dealt with his first experience of Augusta in two practice rounds last week, afterwards sounding anything like a student trying to break the code of the game’s greatest enigma. “Yeah, I could see where you’ve got to land the ball to cope with the slopes,” he said. He then went on to admit

that he had been more in awe on his maiden visit to St Andrews three years ago.

To Harrington’s mind this is exactly the philosophy McIlroy should be adopting. “Above all, Rory has to be true to himself,“ said the 37-year-old. “A cautious strategy isn’t him and if his approach isn’t good enough this year, let it moderate over time.”

The message was enjoy it; and if Augusta enjoys you, then so be it. There will be plenty of time to get his own back. In this regard, McIlroy is blessed with the ideal temperament. “He plays the game like Seve,“ said his manager, Chubby Chandler. “He hits and runs after it and then hits it again. He is so refreshing for the game, so much fun to watch. Unlike most of the other guys, he is not bloody dilly-dallying over the ball taking an absolute age to hit it. It’s why the galleries warm to him so much.”

As the patrons drooled over his rhythm on the range yesterday and then followed him on to the course for his nine holes practice it was obvious that Augusta was hot for McIlroy. It was not Tiger he was accompanying, but Graeme McDowell and although it was not the dream pairing it was more than likely the ideal pairing. McIlroy could be himself.

“You know what I’m like, I’ll just go out to play,“ he said. “If I play well enough to win, I do. If I don’t, it is another valuable bit of experience I can bring to the Masters next year.”

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Filed under: News and written by Lee Evans