AUGUSTA, GEORGIA | Rory McIlroy keeps joining ever-more exclusive clubs.
Last year he became just the sixth man to win the career Grand Slam. Now he is the fourth to repeat as Masters champion and the third European native to win six or more majors (Jersey’s Harry Vardon still leads with seven).
The career-slam and back-to-back clubs are not the only distinctions McIlroy now shares with Jack Nicklaus. They can compare notes on losing big leads at Augusta National and still surviving to collect green jackets. After leading by a record six strokes through 36 holes last week, McIlroy shot a third-round 73 to fall into a tie with Cameron Young before prevailing on Sunday. Nicklaus led by five shots through 36 holes in the 1975 Masters when he, too, shot 73 on Saturday and actually fell one shot behind Tom Weiskopf heading to the final round. The 18-time major winner rebounded with a Sunday 68 to eke out a one-stroke victory over Weiskopf and Johnny Miller on what is regarded as one of the most exciting Sundays in Masters history.
McIlroy certainly has a flair for the dramatic and has more hills to climb.
“I just won my sixth major, and I feel like I’m in a really good spot with my game and my body,” he said. “I don’t want to put a number on it, but I feel like this win is just – I don’t want to say a stop on the journey, but yeah, it’s just a part of the journey. I still have things I want to achieve, but I still want to enjoy it as well.”
BOGEY-FREE: Scottie Scheffler.Every bit of the world No. 1’s 11-under total came in the last two rounds (65-68) when he became the first player since World War II to go without a bogey on the weekend at the Masters. Unfortunately, his runner-up finish after falling 12 strokes behind McIlroy through two rounds fits a pattern this season of coming up just short after digging himself an early hole.
BIRDIE: Cameron Young. The birdies ran out on the back nine of the 28-year-old’s bid to become the third straight Players champion to win the Masters, but make no mistake that Young is firmly one of the players to regard as a favorite in majors going forward. Despite starting 4-over par through 11 holes, he played his way into the final pairing Sunday by playing the next 43 holes in 15-under. He’s arrived.
BOGEY: Justin Rose. The three-time Masters runner-up was poised to get over the hump at Augusta when he birdied Nos. 7, 8 and 9 to take the lead to the back nine on Sunday. But before they could look for a coat that would fit him he bogeyed 11, 12 and three-putted 13 for par and watched Rory sail past him. Maybe next year, when he’ll be an older 46 than Nicklaus was in 1986, he can find the finish he craves. But first, watch out for Rosie in the PGA Championship at Aronimink.
BIRDIE: Tyrrell Hatton. The mad Hatton had nothing much to be upset about with a pair of 66s on Friday and Sunday. His even-par Saturday when the third-round scoring average was the lowest in history cost him a chance to win the green jacket, but his finish just two back assures his return in 2027 and signals his continued growth on the major stages.
BOGEY: Bryson DeChambeau. One of the pre-tournament favorites missed the cut thanks to a pair of triple bogeys when he couldn’t extract himself from bunkers on 11 on Thursday and 18 on Friday. Since declaring “I’m looking at it as a par-67 for me” ahead of the November 2020 Masters, DeChambeau is 16-over actual par and 122-over his imaginary par, which he’s only broken once and matched once.
PAR: Competition Committee. It’s hard to fault the quality of the leaderboard and the show it produced, but it would have been fun to see the field face a sterner challenge in ideal weather conditions. New chairman Geoff Yang was handed a rare perfect palette to set up Augusta National any way the club wanted with a firm and fast course and no rain or heavy winds in the forecast all week. Instead of seeing who could handle the Masters course at its toughest, they softened it up with enough water overnight to keep it right where they usually have it (McIlroy won with a 12-under 276 total, and the average winning score since 2000 is 11-under 277).
PAR: Patrick Reed. The 2018 champion looked poised to be the biggest threat to Rory’s potential runaway when he needed only 28 minutes to trim a six-shot deficit down to two with a birdie-birdie-birdie start Saturday. But his hopes quickly withered as he failed to break 70 on the weekend and finished T12.
BOGEY: Shane Lowry. Closing issues that have plagued the Irishman of late seem to be setting in as the 2019 Open champ blew up on Sunday for the second straight Masters. Last year he started the final round T6 and shot 81, and this time he was fourth and two strokes off the lead before a soul-crushing 80.
ACE: Lowry. The serial hole-in-one artist became the first player in Masters history to collect crystal for two aces, adding Saturday’s from 190 yards on No. 6 to his 1 at 16 in 2016. Lowry owns an enviable list of aces including the 17th at TPC Sawgrass (2022), seventh at Pebble Beach (2025) and the second at Memorial Park just two weeks before Masters in the Texas Children’s Houston Open.
QUAD: Firethorn. The par-5 15th hole was merciless, especially on a bright and blustery Thursday when it was in the Masters dream-crushing business. A record three quadruple-bogey 9s were posted there in the first round, including 66-year-old Freddie Couples, who was 2-under before depositing two balls into the pond for the first time in his 41 Masters starts. José María Olazábal, 60, also had his 2-under turn on the leaderboard spoiled by a double there.
BIRDIE: Max Homa. Of the 17 players who finished in the top 12 and ties to secure their return for the 2027 Masters, none feels better than the struggling Homa, who did the same thing last year to qualify to play last week. “I would like next time to be in contention earlier, not need a miracle on Sunday,” Homa said. “But for not having it all and feeling like I left some out there, I’m really proud.”
BIRD: Robert MacIntyre. The volatile Scot also made one of those quads on 15 to scuttle his hopes in an opening 80. His second nine on Thursday included 41 shots, some hot-mic foul language on Nos. 12 and 13, two club slams on 14 and 17 and a middle-finger salute after his ball found the pond on 15 the first of two times. B-Mac left the property Thursday and Friday without comment, incendiary or apologetic, and reportedly was reprimanded for his conduct.
BOGEY: Sergio García. Speaking of tantrums, the 2017 champ broke the head off his driver Sunday when he threw a hissy fit after driving into the fairway bunker on the second hole. It survived taking a chunk out of the tee box but turns out those Augusta coolers are tougher than titanium. If Spanish playing partner Jon Rahm and celebrity patrons Rafael Nadal and José Andrés were impressed with his passion, Geoff Yang – the new chairman of the Competition Committee – was not and gave Sergio a code-of-conduct warning on the fourth tee. Second violation would have meant a two-shot penalty and third violation a DQ.
BIRDIE: Haotong Li.The charmingly funny 30-year-old from China offered a little TMI about his toilet time ahead of Friday’s second round that had him considering withdrawal if he had felt sicker. Instead, he perked up and reeled off four straight birdies on 13-16 and posted a pair of 69s Friday and Saturday to leave him tied with Scheffler and in contention. His 6-10 combo on 12 and 13 Sunday, however, was hard to stomach. But in a week with a few bad characters, his good-natured character stood out.
PAR: Abe Mitchell. Other than having his likeness immortalized atop the Ryder Cup trophy, the golfer whom five-time Open winner J.H. Taylor dubbed the original “greatest player to never win a major” is largely unknown to most golf aficionados. McIlroy came close to sharing a distinction with Mitchell of being the only players to blow a 36-hole lead of six shots or more in a major. Mitchell lost his six-shot lead in the 1920 Open Championship at Royal Cinque Ports. Rory dodged that dubious bullet.
BOGEY: Amateurs. None of the six amateurs in the field made the cut, so nobody got the silver medal for low amateur or visited the Butler Cabin on Sunday. British Amateur champ Ethan Fang and U.S. Amateur runner-up Jackson Herrington shared the lowest score (8-over 152). At least Mason Howell, 18, got to spend the night in the Crow’s Nest and share the stage with his idol, McIlroy, during the eventual champion’s two record-setting rounds. “That’s something I’ll remember forever and something I can go home and learn off of and just push myself to work even harder,” Howell said.
BIRDIE: Purse. Augusta National put its gnome money to good use, bumping the overall purse to $22.5 million and the winner’s share to $4.5 million – matching the largest individual payout in golf at the Players Championship. The consolation prizes aren’t bad either: all professionals who did not qualify for the final 36 holes received $25,000.
BIRDIE: Masters mahjong. Forget the gnomes. For those who can afford Berckmans Place badges, one of the hottest new items was a Masters-themed mahjong set. The tiles ($500), mat ($100) and carry bag ($75) were a bargain if you got them on site to impress today’s version of book club mates at home. Tiles feature gnomes, chairs, umbrellas and various other Masters staples like pimento cheese and peach ice cream sandwiches, azaleas and badges.
BIRDIE: Frankie Fleetwood. There are cool exceptions to the kids-hitting-shots conundrum (Jack’s grandson making an ace one year and Poppy McIlroy’s great putt in 2025), and the best ongoing Par 3 story is Tommy Fleetwood’s 8-year-old son’s quest to hit the 120-yard ninth green over Ike’s Pond. When his driver had enough distance but missed wide right, the crowd implored him to take a mulligan. His second try splashed just a few feet right of the peninsula green. “I’d like to thank everyone right now, but I don’t know their names,” Frankie said of all the patrons who cheered him on.
DQ: Mark Calcavecchia. The 1989 British Open champion got ushered off the premises for violating the club’s cell phone policy on Tuesday. It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the honorary invitee was shown the door a day before players during the Par 3 Contest were openly taking selfies, which is supposed to be forbidden. “I’ve got nothing negative to say about Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters, so I think we should literally hang up right now,” Calc told Golfweek before hanging up.
BOGEY: Cameron Smith. Remember him? The young Aussie was a superstar when he won the Players and Open championships in 2022 before jumping to LIV Golf. His star has steadily tapered and now he’s missed six consecutive major cuts going back to the 2024 Open. Feel free to judge for yourself whether it’s correlation or causation.
BOGEY: Par 3 Contest. What used to be a genuine competition before the pressure starts on Thursday has become pretty much a made-for-TV carnival. All the players’ kids in their caddie jumpsuits are adorable, but too often they’re being used to make scorecards unofficial to avoid the dreaded jinx. Having Kevin Hart and Jason Kelce so prominently playing court jesters on the broadcast was perhaps too much. Bring back the other past major/amateur champs and make it an actual contest again.
BIRDIE: Masters Candy Bar. The tournament introduced its first exclusive candy bar ($2.25), and I have notes. While the flavor combination of dark-milk chocolate blend with caramel, rice crisps and hazelnut crunch is excellent, it’s a little too chewy. That didn’t stop me from eating several across the week.
BOGEY: CBS. The network home of the Masters usually delivers the best broadcast of the season with its limited commercial interruptions. But The Eye took its camera eye off the ball when McIlroy and Young hit their final approaches on 18 and it never bothered to show Haotong Li’s 10 on the 13th hole even though he was playing with Scheffler. Along with a lot of unacknowledged tape-delayed footage of shots where viewers could already know the result from tracking players, it was not the network’s best work. NBC’s Kevin Kisner had a lot to say about it.
DOUBLE EAGLE: Lou Miller. The 82-year-old from Chapin, South Carolina, has attended 68 consecutive Masters since 1958 and has held four weekly badges since 1966. Every year, Miller invites at least one first-timer (often strangers) who has never attended the Masters in person to join him, figuring he’s treated at least 200 people to their first Augusta National experience. “I enjoy seeing people be happy,” Miller told The Augusta Chronicle.
WD: The tree. What was once the greatest gathering spot in golf has been further diminished by the new Player Services Building that allows players and their families to disappear into their own private sanctuary instead of everyone hanging out under the live oak outside the clubhouse. With fewer mingling members and guests thanks to posh hospitality venues like Berckmans Place, the central scene will never be like it was 20 years ago when everybody who was anybody in golf collected there. From a storytelling standpoint, it’s devastating. The message is now fully controlled in brief podium stops where everyone gets fed the same material.