Heading into the 2025 Masters, Rory McIlroy needed some good juju to help get him over the mental barriers that, to that point, had prevented him from winning a green jacket. And he may have got that assistance in the form of a secret good luck charm he wore every day at Augusta National during his winning week.
New Zealand Tour pro Ryan Fox revealed the previously unknown Masters tidbit in a recent media call.
Ryan Fox reveals McIlroy’s unlikely Masters good luck charm
Ever since his disastrous collapse on Sunday at the 2011 Masters, McIlroy had struggled at Augusta. No one ever questioned that he had the talent to claim a green jacket, but that only added to the pressure. After winning the 2014 Open Championship, the Masters became the final leg McIlroy needed to complete the career Grand Slam.
That didn’t help with the pressure.
But the all-time great from Northern Ireland finally rid himself of those Augusta demons this year, beating Justin Rose in a playoff to finally earn his green jacket and Grand Slam.
After his Masters triumph, McIlroy opened up about how the pressure to win the Masters had impacted him over the previous decade. He did not, however, reveal the good luck charm he’d worn during his victorious romp through Augusta this year.
Fox provided us with the goods there.
It turns out late last year McIlroy made a trip to play Tara Iti in New Zealand, ranked 20th in GOLF’s Top 100 Courses in the World. He played alongside Fox and former New Zealand prime minister John Key. During the trip, Key presented McIlroy with a special gift: a pounamu.
Pounamu are small carvings made out of green stones in New Zealand that hold great spiritual importance to the native Māori culture. They are often worn as pendants around the neck.
Fox ran into McIlroy at the 2025 PGA Championship in May, one month after the Masters, and that’s when Rory revealed just how much the pounamu meant to him. He told Fox that’d he’d worn it driving down Magnolia Lane every day during Masters week.
“Rors kind of said to me the first time I saw him after Augusta, and I’d just won Myrtle Beach, as well, ‘John had gifted me that [pounamu] and I felt like it was good luck. I wore it down Magnolia Lane every day,'” Fox revealed in a media call for the 2025 BMW Australian PGA Championship. “John actually texted me a photo of him in a golf cart with Rory wearing his pounamu, which was really cool.”
“It’s a mark of prestige, we call it mana, basically,” Fox explained. “Obviously it means a lot to Rory … it was a nice little story that we had a little bit of Kiwi on him when he was at Augusta.”
Where Rory stands in FedEx Cup Playoffs and Ryder Cup
Whether or not you attribute McIlroy’s good fortune at this year’s Masters to his pounamu, the good luck seemed to run out when he left Augusta. He finished T47 at the PGA then missed the cut at the RBC Canadian Open, which Fox won for his second victory of the season.
McIlroy regained his from eventually, putting together solid performances in his last three regular-season events: T6 at the Travelers Championship, T2 at the Genesis Scottish Open and T7 at the Open Championship.
With three wins on the year, McIlroy is comfortably on top of the European Ryder Cup standings, and he’s expected to play a huge role at Bethpage Black in September.
But first he has to compete in the FedEx Cup Playoffs. McIlroy caused a bit of controversy when he chose to skip the first round of the playoffs, this week’s 2025 FedEx St. Jude Championship. Currently in second in the FedEx Cup standings behind Scottie Scheffler, McIlroy will instead get his playoffs started at next week’s BMW Championship.
The playoffs will end at the Tour Championship at East Lake, as they have for many years. But one big change this year is that there will be no starting strokes at the finale. Despite a stellar season, McIlroy will start the Tour Championship at even par like everyone else as he vies for his fourth-career FedEx Cup title.
