That was three majors in a row for Woods, and he went on to an unprecedented sweep of the majors. McIlroy is not there yet. The next step is Augusta National the Masters starts in 241 days -- and a shot at his third straight major and the career Grand Slam. What he carries with him is the belief that he can battle back just as easily as he can blow away a field.
Boy Wonder can make the game look easy, even in the majors. He was eight shots ahead at Congressional going into the last day and he set the U.S. Open scoring record on a rain-softened course in 2011. He was three ahead at Kiawah Island going into the last round of the 2012 PGA Championship when he won by a record eight shots. And he had a six-shot lead on Sunday when he polished off that wire-to-wire win at the British Open last month.
So he was in foreign territory standing in the 10th fairway at Valhalla on Sunday. He watched from 281 yards away as Rickie Fowler poured in a 30-foot birdie putt that put McIlroy three shots behind with nine holes to play.
"I knew I needed to do something, and I needed to play catch-up and I needed to make some birdies," McIlroy said. "That 10th hole was huge." The 3-wood he struck -- a little lower than he planned, a little more left than he wanted -- rolled up the left side of the fairway and onto the green just 7 feet left of the cup, and the eagle putt is what got him back in the game.
McIlroy still had plenty of work left. He made a 10-foot birdie on the 13th hole to share the lead. He went back ahead by one shot when the A-list of challengers -- Fowler, Phil Mickelson, Henrik Stenson -- all made a mistakes. And then he sealed it with a 9-iron from a fairway bunker on the 17th hole to 10 feet. That gave him a two-shot lead. The final round as so close that it was the largest lead by anyone all day.
