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Rory McIlroy is so close to his first Green Jacket and the career grand slam that he can smell it. A win may have seemed far away on Thursday after McIlroy made a pair of double bogeys on the second nine, but he has surged into the lead after 54 holes.
McIlroy put on a show at Augusta National during the second and third rounds. He shot a 5-under 31 on the second nine on Friday before kicking off his third round with a birdie-eagle-birdie start to get into the lead.
By the end of the day, he had backed up his 6-under 66 on Friday with a matching score on Saturday and now sits at 12-under-par, two shots ahead of the closest competitor, Bryson DeChambeau.
McIlroy’s total score of 12-under 132 on Friday and Saturday nearly tied the record for the best score in the second and third rounds of The Masters. He came up one shot short of Tiger Woods, who fired a 13-under 131 on Friday and Saturday back in both 1997 and 2005, according to Justin Ray.
Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images
Woods went on to win the Green Jacket in both of those editions, so maybe it’s a good omen for McIlroy to be mentioned in the same breath as both of those legendary performances.
While McIlroy couldn’t match that Woods record, he did achieve something that Woods never did on Saturday. McIlroy became the first player to start his round with six straight threes on the card on his way to another great score.
McIlroy’s lead got a little less comfortable on Saturday evening when Bryson DeChambeau made three birdies in his last four holes to get to 10-under for the tournament.
Now, the two of them will play together on Sunday in the final pairing for what should surely be a firework show between two of the biggest stars in golf.
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