Rory McIlroy hoping Butch Harmon visit pays off in bid for elusive Masters win

Most people leave Las Vegas with considerably less money than when they arrived, but Rory McIlroy’s recent trip to Sin City could prove priceless.

Faced with a mediocre run of results by his standards and with the 88th Masters on the horizon, McIlroy headed west for a lesson with famous coach Butch Harmon, the man behind the first eight of Tiger Woods’s 15 major titles.

Harmon’s credentials mean McIlroy’s visit could not entirely be labelled a gamble, but it was a significant rolling of the dice ahead of his 10th attempt to complete the career grand slam by earning a fabled green jacket.

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Putting @McIlroyRory to the test. pic.twitter.com/NjUXpc4wis

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“I’ve done this a number of times in my career,” McIlroy said. “I met Butch when I was 14-years-old, so we’ve always had a good relationship. If there’s one guy that I want to go and get a second opinion from, it’s him.

“It’s the same stuff that I’ve been trying to do with my coach Michael (Bannon), but he sort of just said it in a different way that maybe hit home with me a little bit more.

“It was a really worthwhile trip.”

Proof of that came with a final round of 66 and third place in the following week’s Valero Texas Open, albeit nine shots behind winner Akshay Batia, and McIlroy arrived in Augusta on Tuesday lunchtime as a firm second favourite behind world number one Scottie Scheffler.

Such a late arrival – McIlroy was the last of the 89 players to register – was another departure from the norm, as was a truncated press conference which saw the four-time major winner face just seven questions.

Woods had been far more expansive an hour or so earlier, reiterating his belief that McIlroy winning