Rory McIlroy’s Masters moment finally arrived — in sensational fashion

AUGUSTA, Ga. — One putt to win the Masters. Can you do it? How about one from 5 feet? It would take the weight of the world off your shoulders. It would put you in the history books. Green jacket for life? You get that, too.

But it’s late in the day, almost 7 p.m., and these greens are getting slick. They are already lighting fast and now you have thousands of patrons breathing down your neck. Can you make it? What about the stress? The nerves? The pressure?

You’ll admit that pressure is good. It means you are in the thick of it, about to do something meaningful. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy; nothing at Augusta National is — and certainly not when the Masters is on the line.

If you miss you’ll hear all the groans and all the doubters. Here we go again, they’ll say. How would you respond? What would you do? And what if somehow, someway, you got a second chance? Would you let the opportunity slip by again?

On Sunday, Rory McIlroy, your freshly minted Masters champion, was faced with all of these questions. He summoned an answer.

Although if you think this was easy, you haven’t been paying attention.

***

HOW DO YOU SLEEP WHEN ONE OF THE BIGGEST DAYS OF YOUR LIFE AWAITS? There’s a story from more than 100 years ago, when Walter Hagen and Mike Brady were set for a playoff at the 1919 U.S. Open. Hagen was out at a club well into the morning, and when someone mentioned that his opponent was already sleeping, Hagen quipped, “He may be in bed, but he ain’t sleeping.”

On Sunday, McIlroy led Bryson DeChambeau by two with 18 holes to play, but the nerves were intense. He had little appetite and tried to force food down. His stomach was in knots; his legs felt like jelly.

“It’s such a battle in your head of trying to stay in the present moment and hit this next shot good and hit the next shot good,” McIlroy said. “That was the battle today. My battle today was with myself. It wasn’t with anyone else.”

He’s been here before. Like at the 2022 Open at St. Andrews, when he was tied for the lead after 54 holes, McIlroy could see the leaderboard from his Rusacks hotel room. How could you not look out the window and think about how your life might change?

“Of course you’ve got to let yourself dream,” he said then. “You’ve got to let yourself think about it and what it would be like.”

McIlroy had been dreaming of this moment for a while now. Maybe you have, too. He’s been stuck on four majors since 2014 and still needed the Masters to complete the career Grand Slam. The major drought was now a decade, but the Masters scar tissue dates back 14 years to 2011, when he led by four on Sunday but shot 80 in the final round.

But he’s a different person now; he was just a kid then. He won two majors later that summer but the Masters, at this iconic course, he could not unriddle. It was always a bad round or a bad hole. He put together countless good finishes — seven top 10s in 16 starts — but he’s at a point in his career where he’s seeking far more than moral victories.

McIlroy reflected on that 21-year-old version of himself on Sunday night, sporting his new green jacket, in the Press Building. He said he was, back then, a man with much growing up and learning to do.

“I probably didn’t understand myself,” he said. “I didn’t understand why I got myself in a great position in 2011, and I probably didn’t understand why I let it slip in a way. But I think just having a little more self-reflection. You know, that experience, going through the hardships of tough losses and all that, and I would say to him, just stay the course. Just keep believing.”

***

AT 2:25 P.M. ON SUNDAY, YOU COULDN’T MOVE. It was nearly impossible to see anything on the 1st tee; a fine day to be 6-foot-2.

A man on top of a ladder worked the old-timey scoreboard right of the first fairway watched the final pairing tee off. He laughed when he saw the rush of patrons following McIlroy and DeChambeau from outside the ropes, an orderly mass of pastels.

Even from his perch, the ladder man still might not have been able to get a good angle of McIlroy’s drive, which found the fairway bunker. He blasted out short and chipped on to 18 feet. You didn’t need to see the putt to know McIlroy missed it. Twice. Because the crowd groaned. Twice.

It took exactly one hole in this heavyweight bout for the match to even up. Down the second fairway, a scoreboard flashed the final pairing’s scores. No phones are allowed here, so this is how you find out who is winning. This and the roars.

“What happened?” one patron asked.

“Rory three-putted and made double,” someone said. “It was ugly.”

McIlroy drove it into the bunker off the tee on 2 and settled for par. DeChambeau birdied to take a one-shot lead.

“Walking to the 2nd tee, the first thing that popped into my head was Jon Rahm a couple years ago making double and going on to win,” McIlroy said. “So at least my mind was in the right place and I was at least thinking positively about it.”

Then McIlroy started to throw punches. He birdied 3 and 4; DeChambeau bogeyed both. Three of the first four holes had two-shot swings.

“This is going to be a great battle,” a patron said.

He was right, for a while. The patrons deserved a good Sunday. Scottie Scheffler pulled away on the back nine last year. Rahm did the same the year before. Three years ago Scheffler won in a laugher. You’d have to go back to 2021 — when eventual winner Hideki Matsuyama and Will Zalatoris battled it out — to find a finish that was decided at the wire. But even that one-stroke margin of victory made it look much closer than it actually was.

These patrons had reason to be invested. They wore McIlroy’s heartbreak, too. They even dared to wonder if maybe, just maybe, this was finally the year. But they’re also smart enough to know that’s a dangerous thought to have prematurely at Augusta National. They flooded the rope lines and spilled overflowing cups of Crow’s Nest as they jockeyed for position.

On some holes patrons simply gave up trying to steal a view. They just stood and waited for the noise to tell them what happened. Plus, with no Tiger Woods here, there wasn’t even that magnetic force on the other side of the course pulling away all the patrons. They were all here watching Bryson vs. Rory; the PGA Tour vs. LIV; Rory vs. his demons.

McIlroy and DeChambeau, golf’s best new rivalry, traded pars on four straight holes before McIlroy made birdie on 9.

They walked to the second nine with McIlroy leading by four. Amen Corner awaited…but McIlroy had been in this position before.

***

LAST JUNE, MCILROY’S COURTESY CAR PEELED OUT OF THE PINEHURST RESORT PARKING LOT. Minutes earlier he’d watched from the podium of a scoring room, hat still crooked on his head, the universal sign that he had just been through hell. He bogeyed three of his last four — including short par misses on 16 and 18 — to hand DeChambeau a one-stroke win in the U.S. Open.

“I look back on that day, just like I look back on some of my toughest moments in my career, I’ll learn a lot from it and I’ll hopefully put that to good use,” he said a month later in Scotland. “It’s something that’s been a bit of a theme throughout my career. I’ve been able to take those tough moments and turn them into great things not very long after that.”

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It was arguably the greatest major heartbreak of his career. There also as St. Andrews in 2022, when he led the Open Championship by two with nine to play and lost. And then there was the 2023 U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club, when he led by two with five to play and lost again.

Two years ago at LACC, in the final question of his press conference, McIlroy was asked not how he deals with the disappointment, but if it ever gets exhausting answering questions about the disappointment.

“It is, but at the same time, when I do finally win this next major, it’s going to be really, really sweet,” he said. “I would go through 100 Sundays like this to get my hands on another major championship.”

***

FOURTEEN YEARS AGO, MCILROY WALKED TO THE 10TH TEE at Augusta National with a one-shot lead and shot 43 on the second nine.

Since then he’s cycled through countless Augusta National strategies and mindsets and game plans. But most of all he’s worked on himself. He’s a more complete version now, he says. He works with sports psychologist Bob Rotella and talks about chasing a feeling. He has notes written on the back of his yardage book that help keep him in his bubble. He glances at them walking down fairways.

In 2011, he tugged his drive on 10 near the cabins where members stay, and made 7. This time he made a birdie 3 and led by four. He bogeyed 11 but parred 12 — a hole famous for destroying green-jacket dreams — and was slowly making his way through Augusta National’s final tests with minimal damage.

On 13, which he played four under through three rounds (going for the green in two every time), he got conservative and hit 3-wood off the tee and laid up with a 7-iron. A little wedge was all he had left to clear Rae’s Creek. Splash. Double bogey.

A few holes ahead, Justin Rose was making a run, birdieing 15 and 16. Forget Bryson, who was leaking oil, Rose and McIlroy were now tied at 11 under.

On 14, McIlroy missed the fairway, missed the green and then missed a short putt for par, leaving it on the edge. But Rose followed McIlroy’s bogey with one of his own, failing to get up and down on 17. After Ludvig Aberg birdied 15, there was a three-way tie at the top, although Aberg didn’t stick around. But Rose did.

The Olympic gold medalist drained a 20-footer for birdie on the 18th hole to take the clubhouse lead. McIlroy heard the roars.

“I needed to make that putt to kind of give myself some hope,” Rose said. “It’s the kind of putt you dream about as a kid, and to have it and hole it, it was a special feeling.”

McIlroy had just hit one of his best shots of the day into 15 and two-putted for birdie. Now he parred 16 and had two holes left. Playing them in one under would win the Masters. Even would be a playoff. Worse than that? His latest heartbreak.

McIlroy was shakier on the second nine, but he pummeled an 8-iron to a couple of feet away and made birdie on 17. A par on 18 would make him a Masters champion for life. He drove it in the fairway, but his approach landed in the bunker. He splashed out and needed to drain a putt from 5 feet to win the Masters.

The patrons held their breath as he pulled back the putter.

***

YOU KNOW BY NOW MCILROY MISSED THE PUTT. He pulled it, exhaled and pursed his lips. It felt like Pinehurst all over again. The crowd was thinking that, too. Heck, maybe even Rory was.

Still shell-shocked, he kissed his wife, Erica, and daughter, Poppy, behind the green and walked to scoring. A playoff was coming next. Rose (66) beat McIlroy (73) by seven on the day, and Rose was coming off good vibes from his birdie on 18 and a focused warmup on the range. McIlroy’s latest wound was still fresh; he was trying to keep his head from spinning.

Walking to a golf cart to get a ride to the 18th tee, Harry Diamond, McIlroy’s caddie, sprang into action.

“Well, pal, we would have taken this on Monday morning,” he said.

“That was an easy reset,” McIlroy said. “He basically said to me, ‘Look, you would have given your right arm to be in a playoff at the start of the week.’ So that sort of reframed it a little bit for me. I just kept telling myself, Just make the same swing you made in regulation. And I hit a great drive up there and the rest is history.”

Rose, who lost a playoff here to Sergio Garcia in 2017, fired an approach to 15 feet, but McIlroy spun his back to 4 feet. When Rose missed his putt, the stage was McIlroy’s again. He got a second chance; he didn’t waste it.

When the ball clanked in the cup — and when the patrons went wild, a celebration they were robbed of 20 minutes earlier — McIlroy threw his putter in the air, put his hands on his head and fell to the ground. He sobbed.

Others did, too. How could you not? We love sport and this game because it makes you feel something. Golf fans shared a small piece of McIlroy’s pain these last 11 years. On Sunday, they shared his joy.

“It was all relief,” said McIlroy, the sixth pro to secure the career Grand Slam. “There wasn’t much joy in that reaction. It was all relief. The joy came pretty soon after that. But I’ve been coming here 17 years, and it was a decade-plus of emotion that came out of me there.”

With Erica and Poppy trailing him, an emotional McIlroy parted a sea of screaming patrons and walked to the scoring area. He wiped his face with his hands and ran them through his hair, just to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. The day was painful yet exhilarating, a mind-bending 19 holes of golf that encapsulated the complete Rory McIlroy experience during this decade-long major drought. Did you expect his first Masters to come any other way?

No longer carrying that weighty Grand Slam burden, McIlroy screamed, hugged and fist-pumped. The ovation, which lasted several minutes, was long overdue. For McIlroy. For patrons. For golf.

When the cheers finally quieted, McIlroy shouted, “I gotta go get a green jacket!”

The roars started up again.