Rory McIlroy reacts to the final putt dropping in front of thousands of spectators Sunday at the Masters.
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AUGUSTA, Ga. — Only 40,000 people or so were on the grounds at Augusta National for Rory McIlroy’s career grand-slam moment. When he won in a playoff, about 20 million were watching the Masters from home, wishing teleportation existed.
And while the broadcast is plenty informative — particularly with more cameras scattered around the property than ever before — there are moments on the periphery of those TV cameras that you’d never otherwise see, that you’d have to be there in person to fully appreciate.
Luckily, this reporter was taking mental snapshots of it all.
So that’s where we’re going to go right now. We’re going to dial back 48 hours and tell you, the fan at home, what you need to know about how Sunday at the Masters transpired.
YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT DRIVING-RANGE POSITIONS. More than ever before, Bryson DeChambeau felt like a WWE star this week. Think back to the way he paused on Saturday to stare into the crowd after birdieing the 16th. He reached his hands wide to engage with fans on both sides of the walkways. And when he got to the media center, he regaled the press with calm, collected thoughts hyping up the final round.
“It will be the grandest stage that we’ve had in a long time, and I’m excited for it.”
Fast-forward to 1:50 or so Sunday afternoon. McIlroy was already halfway through a range session, in the exact middle of the range. DeChambeau finished his chipping practice and moved toward his opponent, pausing to stand in the hitting station two behind McIlroy. His caddie and manager stood a few feet away as DeChambeau addressed an imaginary ball and mimicked a swing, analyzing if he wanted to hit balls behind McIlroy’s back.
Nope.
He quickly moved to the hitting bay on the other side of his opponent, in a move that had to be purposeful. Want to get inside the mind of the guy beating you by two? Get in his eyesight first. There’s no way this was an accident. DeChambeau has tussled with McIlroy before, in majors and a (lower-stakes) match. He knew what he was doing (or trying to do) and you had to wonder if it would work. Considering DeChambeau’s pouty response after finishing his round, I’d say we have the baseline for a true rivalry moving forward.
YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT BRYSON’S ENTRANCE. Adding to the feeling of a heavyweight fight was the entrance. Over the years, it has become tradition for members and their guests to create an alleyway — maybe 10 feet wide — for the players of the final group to walk from the clubhouse to the 1st tee. McIlroy shot through it first, anxious to get to the putting green adjacent the tee, but DeChambeau took his time.
He signed autographs near the range, smiled wide during a golf cart shuttle ride to the clubhouse and then beamed as he reached the alley. His agent stood there checking the time, nervous as I’ve ever seen him, just minutes before DeChambeau was expected on the tee. But I was captivated by what — or rather, who — was next in line on this walk to the tee.
Simply put, I have never seen so many Gen Z’ers underneath the awning of the clubhouse, or tucked in around the big oak tree, which is typically a place known for meetings between golf industry professionals 30 years their senior. The youthful volunteers and wait staff who tend to members and their guests all week long had squeezed out of the dining areas for a look at DeChambeau. He pulls a different breed of golf fan — even at Augusta. One onlooker started fanning her face with her hands as DeChambeau passed by. Others hugged each other when he had gone. He may have lost Sunday but he feels like golf’s rockstar at the moment.
YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT HOW THEY DELIVER SCORES. A few hours later, DeChambeau had taken himself out of the running. I watched the final group come through the 12th hole and rushed to the bleachers right of the 15th hole. It’s among the most underrated viewing locations on property, particularly if you can access the far left side or the top row, which allows you to lean over the railing and see all of the 16th green, as well as — thanks to some tree-thinning over the last 12 months — the fairway leading up to the 17th green.
It was from that top row that I craned my neck for minutes waiting patiently for an update at the leaderboard behind me. It was so close I could nearly touch it, and the scores felt extra close when the manual scoreboard operators — like their cousins at Fenway Park or Wrigley Field — pulled back the window next to a player’s name. In a matter of moments, we knew we’d have a better sense of what had happened across the property.
The blank, white card under hole 13 for McIlroy went away, and because McIlroy typically eats 13 alive, we all expected it to return with a red 14 (under) or a red 13 at the very worst. When a red 11 returned instead, it was as close to pandemonium as bleachers can get at this event. A massive, collective gasp was followed by cussing and cheering before an elongated stage of disbelief: whispers, proclamations, you name it. Nothing gets the conversation flowing like a simple, surprising red number on a white card.
YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THAT SHOT ON 15. At the Masters, you get to know the people sitting near you. You’re all cheering for brilliance, but you might be cheering for one player more than another, even in a pro-McIlroy crowd. Sitting in front of me, in the second-to-last row and vehemently cheering against McIlroy was former Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron. It didn’t ask why he was anti-McIlroy, but my gut tells me he was financially invested in DeChambeau’s success.
Which is what made it very entertaining watching both their approaches into the 15th. DeChambeau’s came up remarkably short of the green — McCarron’s shoulders slumped — causing McIlroy to switch from an 8-iron to a seven. Your view at home was from behind him, and that yellow streak of a shot-tracer hooking around the trees. My view was with the golf ball soaring at me, floating slowly in the hurting breeze. In that split second, I believed so ardently that it wasn’t going to cover the hazard that I instinctively said it aloud.
Ohmygod it’s short.
And then it wasn’t.
There are many different types of roars at the Masters, and I’d argue my favorite is that of a lengthy approach that slowly, slowly, slowly gets better, allowing the noise to build, build, build to a max. This shot took 16 seconds from start to finish, and it had to feel shorter on TV but felt like it took double that in person. Jim Nantz called it the shot of a lifetime. I thought I had seen the greatest shot of McIlroy’s career. Then I watched him miss his eagle putt so badly all I could do was laugh. That’s how this game works.
YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THEIR EYES ON 17. It was at the 17th hole that this Masters became impossible to watch. Firstly, because of the hordes of patrons collecting in a bit of a bottleneck between 17 green and 18 tee. Being 6-foot-2 and on your tip-toes isn’t enough. It requires being 6-foot-2 and squeezing a glimpse between the heads, ears and shoulders ahead of you, hopeful a shot might cross through that narrow alley.
When your view of the golf becomes so inhibited, people begin to look in other directions, away from the action. You tend to see a lot more eyeballs then, as people attempt to read the mood of other patrons. I think the best explanation of how everyone looked as McIlroy stood over a 3-footer is the Flushed Face emoji, with red cheeks, eyes open wide, eyebrows raised.
Right then it was impossible to watch in another way. McIlroy was in what Joel Dahmen calls the Throw-Up Zone. So close you absolutely should make it, but you’re so nervous you might throw up and miss it instead. The crowd surrounded the ropes at least eight people deep. The inner half were watching the putt while the outer half were just listening.
YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE WALK BEFORE THE WALK. No image will outlast this Masters quite like the teary-eyed walk McIlroy took from the 18th green to the clubhouse when it was all done. But I’d like us all to remember that he took that walk a bunch this week. Players do it after every round, and McIlroy did it just minutes earlier, after missing that 5-footer to win in regulation.
He was upset with himself and he looked upset at his surroundings. The people getting loud for a playoff he had mistakenly given them. He looked straight forward the entire time, maybe 30 feet in front of him, the safest place to look. He just kept staring at the ground 30 feet ahead of him and soon enough he was be in scoring, signing for a 72-hole tie. This is exactly how McIlroy looked all week on that walk. It’s how he looked at Pinehurst, too, distancing himself from the fans, wrapping himself up in what he calls his cocoon. The walks before the walk say so much about a player’s headspace — for Rory and Bryson and Justin and everyone else. They are sometimes just as fascinating as the eventual walk of the champion.
YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE SCENE AT 10 GREEN. It doesn’t take much mental math to figure that the playoff is bound to finish on the 18th hole, the designated first stop of the sudden death playoff. But roughly speaking, we’d see both players make par maybe 40% of the time, sending them to the 10th, the second playoff hole.
Knowing this — and seeing the crowds at 18 — I took the gamble. As I made the walk down 10, I peered through the trees that separate these two holes, squinted into the setting sunlight. There went McIlroy, followed shortly by Rose. They were both in the fairway, which seemed to boost my chances of them making the turn back to me. As I flanked the sidehill, I skirted around some low-hanging branches to find that I was only the 3,476th person to think this way. A throng of giddy statisticians surrounded the green with the belief that they, too, had make the right call.
A golfer chasing history creates buzz like this, and we may be waiting around a long time for a more popular Masters champion than McIlroy. “We all want Rory to win,” one fan said aloud, “but we want him to do it here in front of us.” It was a chatty bunch down there, headlined by the lucky few on the outskirts of the group who had nuzzled up next to the crane camera operator. His broadcast rig offered the only screen in the area, a tiny, iPad-size view of what was playing out 450 yards away. A dozen people leaned in over his shoulders, and began calling out play-by-play.
Rose to 15 feet!
Rory’s up now.
Rory to five feet!
Each call trickled out around the green in a wicked game of telephone. Somehow, Rose’s putt shrunk during that communication spell and McIlroy’s increased in size. I felt compelled to walk around and tell people the truth. If Rose misses, this thing is over.
After about a minute, we heard the booming applause from up the hill. The gamble didn’t pay off, but it did offer the most amusing acceptance of a major-winning putt I’ve ever been around.
Sean Zak is a writer at GOLF Magazine and just published his first book, which follows his travels in Scotland during the most pivotal summer in the game’s history.
