McIlroy meltdown a round early this year

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- The collapse was much earlier and the crash landing much softer this year for Rory McIlroy. He spared himself a repeat of last year's back-nine meltdown in the final round by shooting himself out of contention with two double bogeys and two bogeys on the front nine Saturday.

He shot 42 for the first nine holes, finishing with a 77 to go 1 over for the Masters. In the space of a day, he went from trailing by one to trailing by 10. "It seems like every year I come here, I throw a bad nine holes out there," the U.S. Open champion said. "The good thing is it wasn't on the last day. I can go out there tomorrow, try and shoot a good score, get a top-10 or a top-five or whatever and at least leave in a positive frame of mind.

"I just couldn't hit any fairways. When you can't hit fairways around here, you make life a lot more difficult for yourself. Making a double on seven and then another [bogey] 6 on eight, that really knocked everything out of me."

At least he had company. Sergio Garcia, playing with McIlroy and also having started the day at 4 under par, shot 75 and wound up at 1 under, eight strokes behind Peter Hanson's lead.

"We couldn't really feed off each other's energy because there wasn't any," Garcia said. "Our bad holes were really bad, and our good holes were bad."

Oosthuizen steps upLouis Oosthuizen, two strokes out of the lead, will play in the penultimate twosome with Bubba Watson. The 2010 British Open champion is way ahead of anything he ever has done at Augusta. Before this year, he had been here three times, missed the cut each time and never had a round of par or better. He has shot 68-72-69 so far by keeping it simple. "Just pick the holes where I feel like I can take on the pin and the rest, try to make pars," he said . . . Vijay Singh was paired with Phil Mickelson, an old jousting partner. Sunday, Singh plays with Tiger Woods, starting at 11:30 a.m.