The Masters 2015: Rory McIlroy has the aura to win the Masters but it’ll be a long time before he's a true great, says Paul McGinley

Rory McIlroy will tee off at Augusta National on Thursday hoping to achieve something that has so far escaped his grasp: to win the Masters.

The bookmakers have made him favourite and his captain at last year’s Ryder Cup knows he can do it.

Not many people in golf are better placed to comment on what McIlroy is or is not capable of than Paul McGinley.

McGinley was integral to Europe beating the United States at Gleneagles last September, and McIlroy, at the tender age of 25, led the way.

Winning at Augusta after clinching the Open Championship and the US PGA for the second time last year would make the world number one only the sixth person to ever complete golf’s grand slam.

And while it’s far too early to be comparing the Northern Irishman to Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods, McGinley does allow for the suggestion to be made that McIlroy has the ability to intimidate his opponents similar to the greats who have gone before.

“Yeah, I think he’s got a bit of it,” said McGinley. “Not as much as Tiger had, but again he’s evolving towards that. When he’s driving the ball like Rory can, he’s very intimidating.”

That was evident at the Open at Hoylake last year where he led for all 72 holes before lifting the Claret Jug.

McGinley said that type of dominance could be the difference this week.

“He knows he has the ability, when he finds that extra gear, he knows nobody else can match him when he gets that gear.

“But it will be a matter of time before someone catches up with him and somebody will challenge him, and that’s what happens. Tiger Woods had that.”

But with that admiration of McIlroy comes a degree of realism. While he is the first person from his country ever to have won four majors - including the US Open in 2011 and the US PGA in 2012 - he has ten fewer than Woods.

Indeed, at the age of 24, the American completed the grand slam, and that is what puts things into perspective for McGinley.

"Rory is evolving as a player and he's evolving as a person too. He's not the finished article," he said. "Even now at 25 it's not right to compare him to Tiger Woods.

"What Tiger Woods has done in his career is a yardstick. Rory is still evolving towards that and every year he is getting better and better, but he still has a long way to go to meet the standards that Tiger set.”

There is no doubting why McIlroy is the favourite to be wearing the famous green jacket on Sunday night.

He possesses the power required to take advantage of the four par five holes that are cunningly positioned on the 7,435 yard course - the seventh longest to host a major tournament - and the trajectory to land the ball to within a few feet on golf’s quickest and most dangerous greens.

But while he may have the perfect game, his tendency to allow his emotions to get the better of him is something he may never master.

Everyone remembers his collapse in 2011 when he blew a four-stroke lead in the final round and finished joint 15th - ten strokes adrift of eventual winner Charl Schwartzel.

And only last month at the WGC-Cadillac Championship his lack of patience defeated him when he threw his three iron into a lake at Doral following a poor shot on the eighth hole.

“That’s one of the things that Rory knows he has to improve is that level of patience, if he wants to evolve to the heights that Tiger set, that’s something he has to improve on,” McGinley added.

“To a large extent, and as Jack Nicklaus always said, winning a major championship there [Augusta] is a high dependency on being patient. Rory is going to improve that, and he’s certainly more patient than he was two years ago, but he has still has a ways to go.”

Paul McGinley will be at The Masters in Augusta commentating for Sky Sports, the only place to watch all four days live.