Rory McIlroy is the Masters champion. Rory McIlroy is a grand slam winner. Over a period of 14 years, through triumph and heartache, he has completed the set. The Masters, the PGA Championship, the US Open, the Open. At last, he has won them all.
Tiger Woods did it a quarter of a century ago, little more than three years after he’d begun to try. Jack Nicklaus did it half a century ago, his quest taking four. Ben Hogan’s took five, Gary Player’s six. In the spotlight, under such scrutiny, it took McIlroy much longer.
Twice during Sunday’s final round, never has something so possible seemed so unlikely. Ask around, and you’d have found people lining up to write off the player who had led by two overnight but who now, walking off the back of the second green, was somehow already behind. When later he trailed by one with four to play, the game was up.
Make no mistake, McIlroy was one step away from being totally overwhelmed in these moments between holes 10 and 15. His bogey at the 11th was fine, especially alongside a double for his playing partner. His approach to 12 was ideal. His decision to lay-up at 13, sensible. But what happened after that could’ve defined his entire career.
McIlroy hit the worst shot of his life, a shot which, had the following hour gone differently, would have been remembered forever by this most cruel of sports. From 86 yards he had to hit the green and he had every inch of it to aim at. McIlroy missed, to the right, into Rae’s Creek. Never will he make a worse double-bogey.
If your head was spinning watching it, imagine for a second being McIlroy in this moment. Given everything that had gone before, and that McIlroy is nothing if not human, so very human, he must surely have been thinking oh no, not again. Fourteen years on from that devastating final round, less than one year on from Pinehurst, he had somehow found a worse way to lose.
Half an hour on from the wedge to 13, he hit the best shot of his life, a shot which, now, we can say will for certain help to define his career. It was in some ways the shot which saved Rory McIlroy: so much more difficult than the one at 13, so much more McIlroy to execute it to the inch. Like Tiger Woods' chip-in, McIlroy didn't go on to slam the door shut. Woods' shot is still replayed as if he did, and McIlroy's will too.
The putt missed. Of course it did. And then, moments after McIlroy had hit another fabulous approach shot to leave himself a birdie chance to the back pin at 16, Justin Rose holed the iconic Augusta putt at the 18th hole, the one that never looks like it can miss, the one that looked here like it might change everything again. The one that tied the lead.
Back at 16 and again, McIlroy’s putt missed; the one at 15 low, this one high. Between these two and the attempt at bogey at the 13th hole you realise that actually all of it could have been OK with a roll this way or that. Instead, he had to go to the 17th hole knowing that no more mistakes were allowed. Rose had taken away McIlroy’s options now.
On commentary, Sir Nick Faldo summed it up perfectly. "One great shot, one great putt and it’s his, but one poor shot and one poor putt, that’s the knife edge he’s on. Incredible. Incredible moment."
Remember that shot at 15, the best of his life, the one to define his career? Forget it. The eight iron to 17, the cries of ‘go, go, go!’, that’s the shot. In the circumstances nobody in this life, the last one or the next could’ve hit it better. This time, the putt was too short to miss.
The 18th hole at Augusta is a fantastic one if you need five to win the Masters. If you need four, it’s terrifying: miss left and it can even be three off the tee; miss right and you’re in the trees, hoping for something. McIlroy needed four, and he had to stand there and wait before he could give it a try.
He could not have walked up that fairway and placed his ball in a better spot. "Keep him breathing, keep him upright." Rich Beem this time, another major champion who never experienced anything like this. Faldo didn't, Beem didn't. So few people have.
Wedge from 125 yards, and the second-worst shot he's ever hit, maybe. Wide right, into the bunker, and now he had to get up and down to win the Masters; no comfortable two-putt, no blockbuster birdie, but a desperate scramble to get this golf ball in the hole in no more than two more hits.
It all came down to a putt, perhaps five feet or six, and if it falls beneath the surface he has done it all. It did not. A look to the skies, a kiss for Poppy and Erica, a sombre walk, time to gather himself. Rose, remember, has been in one of these before. And for him, this is not everything, at least not quite.
Rose nearly holed his approach, but it was 20 or 30 yards further than McIlroy's, which came backwards, whereas his went forwards. It meant that Rose would have 10, at most 12 feet down the hill, but with McIlroy inside five. Is this it? Can it finally end? Two putts, two separate putts, each of them short, to win the Masters. Surely, nobody has ever missed two of these and won the thing.
This time, thank goodness, Rory McIlroy did not miss.
Even by McIlroy’s standards, this was all too much. How to make sense of it except to say that all his brilliance and all his frailties bled into the meeting of clubface and ball and turf and, somehow, this time, after all this time, he landed on the right side of it.
Great sportspeople outrun analysis. McIlroy was going to have to win another major before he could win this one. McIlroy was going to have to steal it with a final-round 64 when others faltered. McIlroy was simply never going to complete the grand slam: the enormity of this task would be beyond even him.
It’s this defiance, this resilience, which has been as much a hallmark of a career spent exclusively at the very top of the sport as the smoothness and balance of an almighty swing, the unmistakable bobbing of his walk when things are going well, the guarantee that he’ll answer a question honestly and that he’ll sometimes change his mind. Every ounce of that resilience was spent on this round of golf.
Whenever a player wins a major, the same questions are asked: what might they now go on to achieve? How many more might follow? And make no mistake, there is a clear possibility that, as at the beginning of his career, McIlroy goes on to add more – and quickly.
Yet the sweetest kind of major triumph is the one which exists singularly in the moment but will stand the test of time. Jack in 1986, Tiger in 2019, Rory in 2025. These are and will be remembered both for what they meant then and for what they still mean, by us now and by those who study this sport in a hundred years’ time.
It simply no longer matters what the fourth and final act of McIlroy’s career brings, only that there can now be one. The third could only end either with this or something like it, say another Claret Jug, or it would’ve had to end when McIlroy stopped trying.
That’s something he’s never done. He has fallen and risen and fallen again for 11 years now until today, at last, he didn’t fall, not even when he made a clumsy mess of the first, not even when he was down to the very basement of his resolve with the green jacket slipping away, perhaps for good, first at the 13th and then when he had a putt to win it and missed.
All of Portrush, of Pinehurst, all of the pain, all of it must make this somehow even sweeter for him. That he nearly let it all go but this time didn’t must give him a sense of extraordinary pride and total relief which may take the rest of his life to sink in.
And us? We are free to say it unequivocally, unchallenged, at last. Rory McIlroy is the greatest golfer of his generation. Rory McIlroy is one of the greatest golfers of all-time.
