McIlroy suffers Norman like melt down on Sunday @ the Masters

Before you can walk you have to learn to crawl. Boy wonder Rory McIlroy found this out the hard way Sunday at Augusta National.

Cool and confident all week and displaying a maturity long beyond his 21 years of age, McIlroy learned the cruel lesson that so many others who have strode these fairways before him have: The Masters truly doesn’t start until the back nine on Sunday -- and it’s usually lost there, too.

Ben Hogan. Arnold Palmer. Scott Hoch. Greg Norman (twice). Rory McIlroy.

In this case, that’s inauspicious company for McIlroy whose four-shot lead going into Sunday disintegrated into an 80-stroke disaster as he tumbled to a tie for 15th in a major championship he seemed so poised to win, much the same way a 21-year-old Tiger Woods did more than a decade ago.

If there’s anything the rest of us learned it’s that Rory is no Tiger, as he was once dubbed in Northern Ireland newspapers headlines like: “The New Tiger” and “Ror of the Tiger.”

That is by no means an indictment of McIlroy.

The comparisons to Woods were inevitable as McIlroy too took to golf as a toddler and by age 2 was already driving it more than 30 yards. By age 9, McIlroy won the world’s under-10 championship and by the time he reached his teen years, he winning everything in sight and had reached No. 1 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking in 2007.

Four years later, McIlroy is surely crushed but his career not scarred after suffering his third major meltdown in nine months.

“I'm very disappointed,” McIlroy said. “I was leading this golf tournament with nine holes to go, and I just unraveled. Hit a bad tee shot on 10, and then never really recovered.

“It's going to be hard to take for a few days, but I'll get over it.”

It was less than a year ago that McIlroy set the golf world abuzz with an opening 63 at the British Open at St. Andrews only to shoot 80 the next day and eventually finish third.

A month later, McIlroy was again in contention on one of the game’s biggest stages at the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits -- until he three-putted the 15th hole in the final round and ultimately finished one stroke out of a playoff with Bubba Watson and Martin Kaymer.

At the Masters, he seemed to have learned from those experiences. McIlroy sprinted out of the gate with a bogey-free 65 in the opening round and by the time Saturday night came he had built a four-shot cushion and was well on his way to securing what looked to be the first of many major championships.

McIlroy was so comfortable in fact that he’d taken to throwing a football around with his friends every night outside the rented house they were staying in for the week.

For three days, McIlroy had also played with good friend Jason Day, 23, and the first two also with 22-year-old pal Rickie Fowler.

Then came Sunday and it was time to get serious. McIlroy was paired with Angel Cabrera, an intimidating figure in stature if not by nature. He’d also won here before.