The buzz from Rory McIlroy’s too dramatic Masters victory on Sunday hasn’t yet subsided and for good reason.
All of it – one of the best Sundays in major championship history, everything that was on the line and the fact it was McIlroy – made this Masters among the most memorable ever and its impact has no expiration date attached.
As much as McIlroy wanted to win the Masters, he needed to win almost as much.
Until Sunday evening when more than 19 million viewers were watching, McIlroy was in danger of being defined more by what he had not done than by what he had. The last of his four previous major championship victories had come more than a decade ago and despite 28 PGA Tour wins including two Players Championships and three FedEx Cup titles, the major drought stuck to McIlroy like a tattoo.
“It’s very difficult. I think I’ve carried that burden since August 2014. It’s nearly 11 years,” McIlroy said early Sunday evening wrapped in his new green jacket.
“You have to be the eternal optimist in this game. I’ve been saying it until I’m blue in the face, I truly believe I’m a better player now than I was 10 years ago.”
Still, the major championship question went unanswered and, specifically, winning the Masters was the singular achievement McIlroy needed to redefine his legacy.
“I don’t have the understanding of what it’s like to be asked about the career grand slam, but I have a small understanding of what it’s like to be asked, hey, you accomplished this, but you haven’t accomplished that. It can be very taxing on people sometimes,” Scottie Scheffler said.
“It was cool to be able to see Rory get the job done. Definitely from the outside it looked a lot more like relief than anything. Rory has accomplished everything in the game of golf, and that was really the last thing for him to accomplish.”
Some may quibble with how McIlroy got there – the four double bogeys, including the one following his dreadful 82-yard wedge shot at the par-5 13th on Sunday, as well as the weak bogey at the 72nd hole with a wedge in his hand – but he got there.
He has held the 54-hole lead six times in major championships and won five of them. The only one he didn’t win was in 2011 when he shot 80 on Sunday at Augusta National, coughing up a four-stroke lead and leaving a scar that he couldn’t ignore every April until now.
“The losses are hard and … just so proud of myself that I keep coming back and putting myself in positions to win these championships.” – Rory McIlroy
Tiger Woods wasn’t perfect either. He lost a two-stroke lead in the 2009 PGA Championship when Y.E. Yang beat him and perhaps the most famous shot of Woods’ career – the slow-motion chip-in at the 16th hole in the final round of the 2005 Masters – obscures the fact he then bogeyed the 17th and 18th holes, forcing him to beat Chris DiMarco in a playoff.
Because McIlroy has been so close so often – he has 19 top-five finishes in majors – the focus has intensified in recent years.
“It’s hard because I’ve played so much good golf. It’s hard to call the second-place finishes … St Andrews [in 2022] was a tough one to take because you only get a few opportunities there during the course of your career.
“The U.S. Open last year was awful. The losses are hard and … just so proud of myself that I keep coming back and putting myself in positions to win these championships,” McIlroy said.
In the media session Sunday evening, McIlroy gave himself the honor of asking the first question.
“What are we all going to talk about next year?” McIlroy said, drawing laughter from the assembled media forced to suddenly contemplate a new narrative.
The new talking points start now.
With the major championship drought now busted and McIlroy freed from the accompanying emotional weight, the question is whether the Masters victory might spur him on to another run of major wins like he had more than a decade ago when he won four in four years.
This year is set up for McIlroy. The PGA Championship is four weeks away at Quail Hollow Club, where he has won what is now called the Truist Championship four times, a spot McIlroy calls one of his favorite places in the world.
Because of his success at Quail Hollow, there is an understandable expectation that he could win his third PGA Championship. By winning the Masters, McIlroy dialed down the sense of urgency that had developed with each major championship.
McIlroy has lost each of the past two U.S. Opens by one stroke, demonstrating he knows how to play grinding golf, and Oakmont is the ultimate test of talent, patience and resilience, each of which McIlroy demonstrated at Augusta National.
Aside from Rose, who made 10 birdies on Sunday, everyone else struggled in the final round. Bryson DeChambeau went into full retreat, Ludvig Åberg charged then fell back and Patrick Reed had a couple of short misses that couldn’t be fully offset by his one-hop eagle at the 17th.
Then there is the storybook chance in the Open Championship at Royal Portrush, where McIlroy would like nothing better than to write a vastly different story than the 2019 version when he shot a heartbreaking 79 in the first round in his home country.
At the Masters, McIlroy showed again that his strength isn’t flawless golf. It is fearless golf.
He hit a handful of head-shakingly lousy shots on Sunday when he shot 73 and barely squeaked into a playoff. The wedge into the creek at the 13th was a runner-up finish away from infamy, not that it will soon be forgotten.
Aside from Rose, who made 10 birdies on Sunday, everyone else struggled in the final round. Bryson DeChambeau went into full retreat, Ludvig Åberg charged then fell back and Patrick Reed had a couple of short misses that couldn’t be fully offset by his one-hop eagle at the 17th.
Winners need help many times. Jack Nicklaus shot 65 on Sunday to win the 1986 Masters but Seve Ballesteros chunked a 4-iron into the water at the 15th, Tom Kite missed a 12-footer on the 18th hole to tie Nicklaus and Greg Norman flared his approach shot up the hill and bogeyed the 72nd hole to assure Nicklaus’ victory.
Doubters, if there still are any, will point to McIlroy wasting a three-shot lead over the closing holes before winning the Players Championship in a playoff last month, losing a four-stroke lead in about 15 minutes at Augusta Sunday afternoon and bogeying the 72nd hole with a wedge in his hand when a par would win the green jacket.
McIlroy spoke daily with sports psychologist Dr. Bob Rotella about the opportunity and challenge awaiting him. It was Rotella who wrote a book titled “Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect.”
McIlroy has the green jacket to prove it.