AUGUSTA, Ga. — Shane Lowry couldn’t bear to watch.
As his childhood friend and longtime Ryder Cup stablemate, Rory McIlroy, was scratching and clawing his way to the green jacket Sunday evening — a coveted prize that had eluded him in 16 previous attempts, some in heart-wrenching fashion — Lowry was watching the CBS telecast on a TV in the clubhouse grill room. The burly Irishman had just wrapped his own final round, posting a disheartening 81 that sent him careening down the leaderboard. He surely must have felt like darting to the tarmac, but he wasn’t about to skip out on this historic moment.
As McIlroy, who also was in pursuit of the career Grand Slam, was making his way up the 18th fairway with a one-shot lead over Justin Rose, Lowry settled into a club chair near the front of the room. He joined a table with Tommy Fleetwood and his family, next to a display case that houses more than two dozen clubs from Masters champions past.
Fleetwood himself looked anxious as he peered up at the monitor set into the wall — he had two dogs in the fight, McIlroy and Fleetwood’s fellow Englishman, Rose — but Lowry was fully unnerved. When McIlroy dumped his approach into the bunker right of the green, the room groaned, and Lowry and Fleetwood simultaneously threw their hands into the air. The misplay left McIlroy with 18 yards between his ball and the hole. Up-and-down for immortality.
As McIlroy dug his feet into the sand to steady his stance, Fleetwood remained optimistic. “He’s gonna hit it to 2 feet,” he said to his tablemates.
For Lowry, though, the tension was too much. He leaned over the table and buried his face in his hands.
When McIlroy finally played the shot — a chunk-and-run from the gleaming sand — Lowry’s face had emerged. He looked up at the screen and barked, “Go! Go! Go!” The ball went, on a perfect line, but pulled up 5 feet short of its mark.
Five feet.
Under most circumstances, that length is all but a gimme for the world’s best golfers, but, of course, nothing is automatic when the weight of history — and an 11-year major drought — rests upon your shoulders.
Lowry was fidgety. He wanted to watch elsewhere. By the time McIlroy was sizing up his decisive par putt, Lowry had exited the grill room, but he didn’t get far. After stepping outside, he stopped, wheeled around and resumed watching the telecast through the grill room window. A club member and couple of other loiterers were also watching from this vantage point, providing an ear for Lowry’s nervous commentary.
“This is about the same length putt he missed at the U.S. Open,” Lowry said, referencing the make-or-break 4-footer McIlroy missed at Pinehurst No. 2 last summer.
On Augusta National’s 18th green, you know what happened next.
McIlroy rocked back his putter, struck the ball…and missed.
***
IT’S ONE THING TO observe the Rory McIlroy Experience from afar, but quite another when you’re in his circle of trust.
Lowry and McIlroy’s relationship was forged more than two decades ago on Ireland’s junior golf circuit. McIlroy’s star ascended faster, but Lowry, a dogged competitor, worked hard to keep up. As elite professionals, they’ve traveled the world together and battled as teammates in international team events. At home — they live near one another in Jupiter, Fla. — their families pal around together. When McIlroy and Patrick Cantlay’s caddie, Joe LaCava, heatedly chirped one another at the 2023 Ryder Cup in Italy, Lowry leapt to McIlroy’s defense. Lowry has since said he feels protective of his friend. McIlroy, meanwhile, has said he has taken much inspiration from the “ease” with which Lowry leads his life. Both have said they are good for one another.
Lowry also has been a welcome sounding board for McIlroy, especially when it has come to the maddening elusiveness of a Masters title. “It’s all he talks about, it’s all he thinks about,” Lowry told reporters Sunday evening in the shadows of the clubhouse. “You know, he might not have wanted to say that, but it’s genuinely been everything for him over the last 10 years.”
With the emerald coat over his shoulders Sunday night, McIlroy reflected on his most infamous Masters collapse, in 2011, explaining he didn’t really know know himself then. He described himself as a “young man that didn’t really know a whole lot about the world,” adding, “I didn’t understand why I got myself in a great position, and I probably didn’t understand why I let it slip in a way.”
His win Sunday looked like it might slip away again. After the double at 1. Then again after the unconscionable wedge into Rae’s Creek on 13. Then again after the sloppy bogey on 18 in regulation. But this time, McIlroy, as he had failed to do so many times before, reversed the gravitational pull.
“I certainly didn’t make it easy,” he said. “It was one of the toughest days I’ve ever had on the golf course.”
***
WHEN MCILROY AND ROSE convened on the 18th tee for the playoff, the clubhouse grill room was still packed. Lowry was nowhere to be seen but green-coated members, corporate bigwigs and the Fleetwood gang still filled the chairs — though they wouldn’t for long. When Rose missed his birdie try from 19 feet on the high side, it cleared the stage for McIlroy, who had just 4 feet left for glory. This time, he converted. When the ball disappeared, he fell to his knees and his body pulsated. “ROAR-EE! ROAR-EE!” the crowds bellowed.
The exorcism was fully underway. The tee shot into the cabins in 2011; the Sunday final-pairing 74 in 2018; the missed cuts in 2021 and ’23 — if you looked closely, you could see every last one of those demons exiting McIlroy’s body. When the ritual had concluded, McIlroy began the victor’s walk from the back of the 18th green across the first fairway and to the area of the clubhouse designated for scoring, a 100-or-so-yard stroll through a roped-off channel of hollering, adoring patrons.
Awaiting McIlroy on the other end was a line of beaming friends, coaches and confidants — and a bear of a golfer who couldn’t wait to wrap his arms around his old friend. In fact, he was the first to do so. As McIlroy neared the cadre of well-wishers, Lowry charged toward him and lifted him clear off the ground, like a soldier greeting his wife upon returning from war. It was a hug 14 years in the making, and you sensed it meant every bit as much to Lowry as it did to the new champion.
“I didn’t have a very good day myself,” Lowry said later of a round that sent him from sixth place at the start of the day to 42nd. “But when I reflect, this is another good example of no matter how tough things get, you keep trying.”
And trying. And trying. And…
