If you’re looking forward to tuning into the 2026 Masters and wondering what transpired at the first major championship last year, let us be the first to tell you that the 2025 edition of the Masters was a spectacle of historic proportions.
Who won the 2025 Masters? That would be World No. 2 Rory McIlroy. The Northern Irishman claimed victory in the most dramatic way possible, sinking a three-foot putt on the first playoff hole to win his first Masters and complete the final leg of the career Grand Slam.
It was a supremely stirring moment for McIlroy and everyone watching, especially when you consider the backstory involved.
Up until the moment on Augusta National’s 18th green on Sunday evening, McIlroy had endured a nearly 11-year winless drought in the majors, with numerous painful near-misses scattered throughout that decade.
After winning the 2011 U.S. Open, 2012 and 2014 PGA Championships and the 2014 Open Championship, McIlroy was one Masters away from the career Grand Slam. Ironically, McIlroy had come close to claiming a green jacket in 2011, when he led the tournament through 54 holes, with a four-shot advantage heading into the final round. But a back-nine implosion that included a triple-bogey on 10, a three-putt bogey on 11 from close range, and a four-putt double bogey on 12 resulted in a final-round 80 and a 15th-place finish.
Why Rory McIlroy’s fairytale Masters win resonated so deeply
Though McIlroy rebounded after that Masters by winning his other above-mentioned major titles, the scar tissue from his 2011 debacle at Augusta lingered, as he posted 21 top-10 finishes in the majors (seven of which were at the Masters) between 2015 and 2024, including four excruciating runner-up finishes. Beginning in 2015, the primary storylines ahead of every Masters included McIlroy’s quest to quiet his Augusta demons and win the career Grand Slam. But it never happened.
That’s why, when McIlroy entered the final round of the 2025 Masters with a two-shot lead over Bryson DeChambeau — the man who had bested him in the previous year’s U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2, when McIlroy missed two short putts down the stretch — the golf world braced for another heartbreak. A few early missteps seemed to indicate that it would not be McIlroy’s year, yet again. He double-bogeyed the 1st hole to erase his lead, and made a another double on the par-5 13th. But DeChambeau failed to capitalize on McIlroy’s mistakes, and McIlroy approached the 18th tee with a straightforward task: Make par, and win his first green jacket — as well as the career Grand Slam.
He bogeyed.
That sent McIlroy to a sudden-death playoff alongside his friend and longtime Ryder Cup teammate Justin Rose. But this time, on the 18th hole once again, McIlroy hit his approach to less than four feet. Rose two-putted for par, setting McIlroy up for his glory moment.
When McIlroy drained the putt, he sank to the ground in an outpouring of emotion — all those years and all that effort, redeemed at last. By winning his first green jacket, McIlroy joined an elite pantheon of players, becoming only the sixth man ever to win all four major championships.
In terms of drama and significance, McIlroy’s Masters win in 2025 was as good as it gets. What will 2026 bring? One thing’s for sure: This year’s edition has big shoes to fill.
