This year's Masters will start in a few weeks, and the greatest attention will certainly be focused on Rory McIlroy. The Northern Irish golfer is motivated to make history at this competition, and finally win the career Grand Slam. Succeeding in this will be very challenging, but the 35-year-old golfer has no doubt that he has the necessary qualities to do such a feat.
Considering that he wants to prepare for this tournament in the right way, McIlroy visited Augusta National this week.
In an interview with the media before one of the tournaments, Rory pointed out that he wants to use such visits to see what changes have been made, putting the accent on the greens.
I use those trips just to refamiliarize myself with the place, clubs off tees, looking to see if they changed any greens, McIlroy said, as quoted by Golf.
Theres four greens that are new this year that theyve redone. You just sort of, you have a look at those and see if theres any new hole positions they give you, stuff like that. Apart from that, honestly for me, its nice to play a practice round without people around and it sort of takes the pressure off the start of the week for me.
Hurricane Helena
Augusta National was hit by Hurricane Helena in September, causing massive damage to the course. Red Ridley, president of the Asia Pacific Amateur Championship, stressed in October of last year that they are making efforts to restore the course to function.
As far as the golf course, it really was affected just as the rest of the community was. There was a lot of damage and we have a lot of people working hard to get us back up and running.- Ridley said.
Rory pointed out that the loss of several trees is noticeable, confirming that the greens are identical as they were after the redesign. The 35-year-old golfer hopes to fight for victory in this tournament, but is now primarily focused on the Texas Children's Houston Open.
