Grand slam primer: What’s at stake for Rory McIlroy on Masters Sunday
Rory McIlroy has a lot on the line on Masters Sunday, including a place in golf history.
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Rory McIlroy knows that Sunday at Augusta National will be “rowdy.” Given everything that’s on the line for the 35-year-old four-time major winner, there are probably other words he wanted to use.
After firing a sizzling 66 on Saturday, including opening with a record six consecutive threes, McIlroy holds the lead at the 2025 Masters by two shots over Bryson DeChambeau. It’s the first time McIlroy has held the outright lead in a major since the 2014 PGA Championship, his last major victory. The last time McIlroy held the 54-hole lead at the Masters was in 2011 when he shot a final-round 80 in what was the first shot in a forever war between a generational great and golf’s iconic theater.
McIlroy will arrive at Augusta National on Sunday needing to beat a course that has haunted him while also defeating the man who took the U.S. Open out of his hands in heartbreaking fashion last June.
McIlroy’s grand slam opportunity
A win on Sunday for McIlroy will snap a major drought that has now stretched into its 11th year. It will give him five majors, vaulting him into the five-major group that includes Brooks Koepka, Byron Nelson, Seve Ballesteros, Peter Thomson, John Henry Taylor and James Braid.
Rory McIlroy is about to play the most terrifying round of his life
It will also make him just the sixth golfer to win the career grand slam (wins at all four major championships), joining Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Ben Hogan and Gene Sarazen.
Woods achieved the feat in 2000 when he won his first of three Open Championships. Nicklaus joined the club in 1966, Player in 1965 and Hogan in 1953.
Sarazen became the first to win the “modern” career grand slam when he won the 1935 Masters.
Should McIlroy prove triumphant on Sunday at Augusta National, he’ll be the first player in 90 years to complete the career grand slam at the Masters. It would put him in rarified air that Arnold Palmer, Phil Mickelson, Tom Watson, Nick Faldo and Seve Ballesteros never reached.
“Yes, if he goes ahead and wins it tomorrow,” Jason Day said Saturday when asked if McIlroy belonged on golf’s Mount Rushmore with Woods and Nicklaus. “I mean, he’s the best player of our generation for sure. He just makes things look so easy.”
How rare is the club McIlroy is trying to join Sunday at Augusta National?
Since 1968, 12 people have walked on the moon. Since 1960, 27 people have descended Challenger Deep, the deepest known point in Earth’s seabed.
One golfer has won all four majors in that time frame.
McIlroy can make it two on Sunday.
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