Masters Favorites 2012: Why Rory McIlroy Will Dominate the Field

Three bad holes.

That's all it took for Rory McIlroy to go from champion to choke artist at The Masters last year.

A triple bogey to kick off the back nine of the final round at Augusta National will do that to a golfer. As will a bogey on the next hole, and a double bogey on the one after that.

That one stretch left McIlroy's scorecard a mess of disappointing marks, dropping him from in control at 11-under-par to back with the pack at five-under.

By the end of the day, the talented 21-year-old from Northern Ireland had racked up six bogies against just one birdie on the way to an eight-over 80, turning a four-stroke lead into a 10-stroke deficit behind Masters champion Charl Schwartzel.

But, to obsess over that one day, devastating though it was to McIlroy's hopes of donning a green jacket, would be to ignore what he did on the first three and why he's in as good a spot as ever to finish atop the leaderboard at Augusta on Sunday.

McIlroy was nothing short of marvelous on Days 1-3 in Georgia last April. He got off to a rousing start, with a seven-under 65 on Thursday (becoming the youngest golfer to lead The Masters after one day), before extending his advantage with a three-under 69 on Friday and a two-under 70 on Saturday.

Thus, as spectacular as his final-day failure at Augusta was—as in, the worst final round by a pro at The Masters who's led after three rounds—it can't also disqualify the success he'd enjoyed on one of the world's most prestigious courses in the preceding rounds.

As far as anyone can tell, the combination of a rough patch on the back nine and the pressure of being so close to the green jacket at such a young age proved to be lethal to a kid who'd won exactly twice as a pro before that, at Dubai in 2009 and at Quail Hollow in 2010.

Since then, rather than cower and crumble, McIlroy has seemingly come back stronger, winning the US Open by a whopping eight strokes and holding off a hard-charging Tiger Woods to take the Honda Classic.

Clearly, the kid's got game, and now he has the experience of success and failure under pressure to make that talent stand up through four grueling rounds of intense competition.

And if Rory's as sound of mind as he is of body, then the rest of the field at Augusta will have no choice but to make way for the "Next Big Thing."

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