Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods a dream Masters pair but on another day Rory and Tiger paired together, tied on six shots under at the start of Masters Sunday, could have been a dream scenario. The problem was that they were 10 shots back from Jordan Spieth, whose play over the previous three days had been as good, in its own way, as all but the very best the two of them had produced in their time. Nike’s copy writers might have cut at least a couple off Spieth’s lead if they had been writing the script. With that, this would be pretty much the same scene they had set in the advert they released at the beginning of the week – seven days and an age ago – which showed the young McIlroy watching wide-eyed as Woods won the Masters back in 1997. The ad ended with the pair of them, McIlroy an adult now, hitting a couple of drives and walking off down the fairway together. And so it went, at 2.30 in the afternoon. Right then the tournament was still alive with possibility, as every Sunday always is at the Masters. If Woods could just conjure up the form he found on the front nine on Saturday, when he went out in 32, well what then? And if McIlroy could manage to play all 18 in the way he did the back nine on Friday, when he came home in 31, who was to say what would happen? Spieth had said that he was going to try and get round Augusta without looking up at the leaderboards. But you cannot shut out the roars, not when they are as loud as the ones the patrons give to McIlroy and Woods when they score birdies and eagles. The crowd around them on Sundayy was, by a distance almost as great as Spieth’s lead, the biggest of the week. Justin Rose would have won in another year, but this was Jordan Spieth's time Rose's was not an inglorious defeat but a stubborn acceptance that Spieth, his partner in Sunday’s final pairing, would not be denied The Masters went to Jordan Spieth, the grateful thanks of watching world to Justin Rose, who stood alone for a while in his resistance to the Texan boy wonder, a brief, solitary hope for those who dreamed of another classic Sunday duel around the cathedral pines of Augusta National. But where Nick Faldo went in 1996, ripping the Green Jacket off the back of Greg Norman in that glorious English afternoon, his protege could not follow. Spieth is no Greg Norman and Rose is no Nick Faldo, at least not on this occasion. There is no shame in that. In the end the Englishman fell to an irrepressible talent. His was not an inglorious defeat but a stubborn acceptance that Spieth, his partner in Sunday’s final pairing, would not be denied. Genius - and on the evidence of the last four days the 21-year-old from Dallas can surely be described in such terms - must have its day. Rose, meanwhile, remains a member of the “one major” fraternity thanks to his US Open at Merion a couple of summers ago. This is a fine reward for his talent and endeavour but it goes without saying he wants more. Two, three, four majors - who knows what the future holds for the 35-year-old Englishman? But for the moment he must be content with what Augusta National has given him over this last week. The Englishman had made his move early. How would his opponent respond? The answer came with dispiriting speed as Spieth holed out for birdie on the third to restore his four-shot advantage. Twice more, on the fifth, where Spieth failed to get up and down, and on the seventh hole, where Rose fashioned a bewildering par from somewhere in the trees to the right of the fairway, the deficit was once again reduced to three shots. However, that proved to be the limit of Rose’s reserves. A poor drive into the trees on the ninth saw him drop another shot to par and fall five shots behind his partner. Try as he did thereafter, he could not find a way into his opponent’s psyche and as time passed and holes ran out it was Englishman who battled hardest for relevancy. To his eternal credit he found some on the back nine, ripping off birdies at the par-five 13th, then another at the 14th and a third strike against par at the 15th. No mistake, this was glorious stuff from Rose but for all that when he stepped on to the 16th tee he was as he had begun the day, four shots adrift of the man he stood next to. In another year he might have been moment away from a famous victory. But this was 2015, the year of Jordan Spieth. The year when everyone else was competing for second place.

• published: 19 May 2015
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