It’s a grand day for McIlroy and the Masters

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AUGUSTA, Ga.—It was a Monday unlike any other 18 years ago in the Open Championship at Scotland’s Carnoustie Golf Links.

Seve Ballesteros, Europe’s greatest and most electrifying player, walked into the press center at Championship and announced the unthinkable. The Spaniard, considered Europe’s Arnold Palmer for his swashbuckling style of play and panache, said he was making the painful decision to retire. Those Ryder Cup heroics, those Open Championships, those Green Jackets--there would officially be no more.

Seve’s departure was a hole that surely would never be filled. Seve fit the description that former Open Championship winner said years later about Tiger Woods, that Tiger wasn’t one in a million, he was “one in ever.”

European golf would never be the same. That was proven three days later at Carnoustie when a mop-haired amateur from little-known Holywood, Northern Ireland, shot 68 in the opening round, one better than Tiger, his childhood hero. The lad was 18, he went on to win the silver medal as low amateur that week. His name was Rory McIlroy. No one knew it at the time, although some hoped, but the torch of European golf had thus been passed ever so neatly.

Eighteen years later, McIlroy finally landed his white whale, winning the greatest Masters Tournament of all time. With apologies to Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods, there has never been a Masters like this one. It ended with McIlroy tapping in a two-foot birdie putt on the first extra hole, the word “tapping” being completely insufficient to describe the effort. Given the circumstances, it might have been the hardest two-footer in Augusta National history. (All right, apologies now to Scott Hoch, too.)

You would realize the moment’s significance because after the ball dropped, McIlroy threw his head back, flipped his putter to Butler Cabin or the Savannah River or thereabouts and fell to his knees, alternately sobbing and shouting in exultation. Not since Ben Crenshaw won in 1996 after the death of his mentor, Harvey Penick, has a Masters champion been so overcome with emotion.

“For Rory to win the Masters after what’s happened to him in previous Masters—it’s very difficult when you’ve had so many chances to win it and you’ve struggled,” six-time Masters champ Jack Nicklaus told Golf Channel shortly after the finish. “Rory struggled today a lot. He struggled throughout the week but he kept coming back. The mistakes he made didn’t defeat him, they spurred him to play better. That’s what is so sensational about it.”

McIlroy led the Masters after 54 holes in 2011 as a 22-year-old. On the 10thtee, he snap-hooked a drive into the trees left and saw it carom deep into the trees near the club’s cabins. Unsettled by that, he shot 80 and didn’t win. He was second going into the final round in 2018 and shot 74. He let the 2023 U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club slip through his fingers and did it again last year at Pinehurst when he missed short putts on the closing holes. 

He needed a Masters title to become the sixth player to win the Career Grand Slam, a feat not accomplished since Tiger Woods in 2000. There were other lost tournaments, too, and McIlroy went 11 years since winning his last major. Once on track to chase history after four majors in four years, McIlroy stalled.  It was inconceivable, given his talent. Over the past decade, the combined component grew into unbearable pressure.

“Rory wasn’t thinking about the Grand Slam, he was thinking about the Masters,” Nicklaus said. “If you gave him his choice of a Career Grand Slam or win the Masters, he’d say the Masters 100 percent of the time.”

So what happened Sunday was that McIlroy won the wildest, greatest, most amazing Masters of all time to get a Green Jacket, get the Career Grand Slam and, by the way, surpass Ballesteros as the greatest European golfer of all-time. McIlroy’s five majors don’t match Seve’s six or Nick Faldo’s six and McIlroy is part of a bigger sixsome. He joins Nicklaus, Woods, Gene Sarazen, Gary Player and Ben Hogan and the only men who have Slammed Grandly. If that doesn’t make him the G.O.A.T. (Greatest Of All Time), what does?

If you watched McIlroy shoot a closing 73 that was either the ugliest 73 you’ve ever seen or the prettiest 73 you’ve ever witnessed, you might not feel like he’s the GOAT-iest. He followed brilliant shotmakiing with awful mistakes and vise versa in his back-and-forth path to victory Sunday.

McIlroy came to the 72nd hole with a one-shot edge over Justin Rose and a perfect tee shot in the middle of the 18thfairway, not the easiest shot for McIlroy. The 18th hole calls for a fade and he likes to hit a hard draw. He executed it to perfection, however. Then he had a simple 125-yard gap wedge to the green. Give him 100 tries when the Masters isn’t at stake, not to mention the Slam and personal vindication, and he hits that green 99 and a half times.

This time, beyond belief after his earlier gaffes, he dumped the shot in the right bunker. His bunker shot was superb, or so it seemed, but the softer ball that McIlroy has been using this year, a key part to his improved play, checked up and left him a five-footer for the Masters. It wasn’t quite what would be considered gimmie range and McIlroy proved it. He pulled it offline to the left Watch his stroke in slow-motion and you’ll see that on his forward stroke, he lifted the putter dramatically, causing it to shut slightly and send the putt offline. 

That was a movie McIlroy had already starred in earlier. He took a four-shot lead to the 13th hole, smartly laid up, then stupidly fanned his 82-yard wedge shot into Rae’s Creek when it bounced off a bank. How is a former No. 1 player in the world capable of such boneheadness? This is exactly how major championships turn to Jell-O and slip through a man’s grasp. McIlroy turned a certain par and likely birdie into a double bogey. He hit a weak pitch shot at 14, where he missed the green, and missed that par putt, too. Not to worry, he hit the tournament’s signature shot at the next, a majestic 7-iron to five feet for the eagle that would surely ice his win.

Then he missed that putt left, too. The birdie got him into a tie with Rose but he edged ahead again with a brilliant shot in tight for birdie at 17. Another lead, followed by the aforementioned fiasco at 18.

The guy who hit those towering shots under pressure, yes, is the GOAT of European golf. And he’s only 36, there is more to come. Of course, we thought that in 2014 when he won a PGA Championship in the dark at Valhalla and were trying to guess what year he’d catch Tiger in major victories. The correct answer turned out to be, Never. 

Meanwhile, life happened. He broke off an engagement with a famous tennis star after the marriage invitations had already been sent out. He found a new love, became a father and kept coming close in majors but finding ways not to win them. He won other events, and lost other events. The Masters remained elusive. He kept working, kept believing and kept improving, not always in a steady straight line. But always trending upward.

“I’ve carried that burden since 2014,” McIlroy said. “Watchign a lot of my peeers get green jackets, it’s been difficult. I’ve tried to be positive every time. Today was difficult. There were points on the bak nine where I thought, Have I let this slip again? I responded with some clutch shot, I’m really proud of that. It’s been an emotionally draining week.”

A true measure of a man’s legacy is his family and friends. His wife and daughter waited for McIlroy, red-faced with tears by the time he staggered off the 18th green and received hugs and handshakes from friends and men in green jackets and his caddie, Harry Diamond, who had an arm wrapped around him. It was a long, long receiving line as McIlroy made his way to the clubhouse. One friend after another. Then Shane Lowry, another Irishman, former Open champion and good friend. Tommy Fleetwood, a fellow Ryder Cupper. Other players’ wives. The other European players and McIlroy are a true band of brothers, bonded by that Cup. 

Some buddies shouted congratulations as he neared the end of the line and McIlroy told them, “I’ve gotta go get a green jacket.” He said it with a giddy voice that made it sound like he was popping in to Stein Mart to buy one. 

In his locker before the final round, McIlroy opened a note from Angel Cabrera, a former Masters champ, who wished him good luck and urged him to play well. Cabrera was paired with the young McIlroy when he came apart in that 2011 Masters. “That was ironic,” McIlroy said. “That was a nice touch.”

The Masters fans were behind McIlroy as they had never been. They knew his history of near misses, they knew he was close to the Grand Slam. They wanted to see history made, of course, but McIlroy’s failures had turned him into something of an underdog, much like New York golf fans got behind Phil Mickelson early in his career when he had yet to win a major championship. When his double bogey at the 13th hole was posted on the outdoor leaderboard facing the 18thgreen, the gallery screamed in anguish, many fans holding their hands on their heads in disbelief. 

Sunday, it all came together in a strange finish and a strange package. Rose made 10 birdies in the final round. Former champ Patrick Reed vaulted into the picture briefly after he holed a shot on one bounce for eagle at the 17th. Swede Ludvig Aberg was two missed makable putts away from swiping this title, one year after he finished second in his first Masters. Bryson DeChambeau struggled and was on the edge of contention until the last four holes. There will be no Sunday at the 89th Master for dummies. There was so much more than these contenders, no simple narrative. It was a day of knots and twists and reversals and surprise. 

But really, it was all about McIlroy. He beat his pursuers but more than that, he beat the golf course and he finally defeated his biggest foe, himself, and all those demons who’d been renting space in his head.

CBS host Jim Nantz is allowed some poetic hyperbole after this one. “The gravity of something as rare, rare history,” he said, “he joins the most prestigious club in the game. Yes, for Rory, it was an enormous weight to bear. Those six have all reached golf immortality. Now there's a new name on the list.”

Immortality. History. Golf lore. That’s all a bit much. What was witnessed on this memorable day was something simpler. McIlroy said it during his winner’s press conference.

“Now I know I’m coming back here every year,” he said in a dreamy tone as if he didn’t quite believe the green sleeves already covering his arms. “Which is lovely.”

Ballesteros, who passed away from cancer in 2011, would be proud. The torch of European golf still burns bright in the hands of that young Northern Ireland lad who eclipsed him. In fact, it’s burning brighter than ever.

Photo credit: Masters champion Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland celebrates with the Masters trophy during the Green Jacket Presentation Ceremony after winning the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club, Sunday, April 13, 2025. Photo credit: Simon Bruty Courtesy Augusta National Golf Club.