Augusta, Ga. — In the end, Rory McIlroy won the Masters, dodged multiple players and overcame his mistakes during emotional 19-hole golf when he walked the final fairway twice, not once, but twice.
He finally conquered Mount Everest. Right now there was only one thing to do. With a red face and tears in his eyes, he turned to his friend and uttered the things he had been wanting to say for over a decade.
“I had to get a green jacket.”
On Sunday, with the pressure of a massive 11-year drought on his shoulder, Augusta’s roar was prepared to serenade McIlroy during his breakthrough. But many whispers also blew through what he called the golf roller coaster round.
“What a god,” the guardian said after McIlroy made a double bogey in the first hole.
“It’s nerves,” another said.
One guardian covered his face with his hands: “He is doing it again.”
When McIlroy made a double bogey on hole 13 after donating the ball to Ray’s Creek, he added another bogey to 14, rebutting birdie with a bogey on the final hole. Even McIlroy thought about it.
“I had a point today when I thought to the back nine, ‘Did you let me slide again?'” McIlroy said. “My battle today was with myself. It wasn’t with anyone else.”
This was a feat that lasted ten years. Although close calls and heartbreak may have occurred in the past, scar tissue remained in the space between victory and defeat. It was here after the playoffs that it happened, and a 6-shot lead with eight holes wasn’t enough, and it felt like all shot McIlroy hits carried seismic forces, including the power of the story to put him on the loser again.
“It’s the best day of my golf life,” McIlroy said. “I literally made my dream come true.”
The 2022 victory at St. Andrews would have been poetic. His 2023 victory at the US Open at the Los Angeles Country Club would have been a concrete testimony of his game’s evolution. Last year’s victory at Pinehurst could have been an epic way to end his major drought.
But none of these victories would have answered the remaining questions: Can McIlroy win at Augusta?
For McIlroy, the meaning of this tournament is personal as it marked his golfing journey. Reminiscences of watching the tournament with his father when he was seven when he spoke again on Tuesday and Sunday nights.
“I think all of that will come back to me,” McIlroy said. “Remember why I fell in love with the game.”
Two years after becoming an expert in 2007, McIlroy made his debut at the Masters in 2009, finishing in 20th place. He has since endured close calls and no shows, at a total of 17 years old. For nearly 20 years, the world of golf and its marquee tournaments have changed. So does McIlroy.
The overgrown dark curly hair that surrounded his face when he was 17 and he drove the Magnolia Lane was gone. Instead, the McIlroy cut is tighter. He wears the passage of time in a grey temple. This shows how long it has been around the sport, and reminds me of how many times I did on Sunday by finally reaching the sport’s Apogee. Career Grand Slam.
“I think I’ve been burdened with that since August 2014,” McIlroy said. “That’s very difficult. Today was difficult.”
McIlroy spoke at length about the nerves he felt throughout Sunday. He spoke about the self-imposed pressure and what he felt when greats like Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods predicted that McIlroy would win the Masters and spoke as if it were a real problem.
But what again showed Sunday’s performance in a frenzied snapshot was that McIlroy never had Nicklaus or Woods. That doesn’t mean that McIlroy’s game isn’t that good. However, his journey was very similar to this week’s result with four double bogeys and mysterious shaking of the week. UPS and Downs are part of the fabric of his f story.
“You have to be an eternal optimist,” McIlroy said. “I really believe now I’m a better player than I was 10 years ago.”
Faced with repeated disappointments, his patience, beliefs and resilience came to that bottom last year at Pinehurst. This defeat shaky the immediate future of McIlroy’s career and needed what appeared to be a hard reset. McIlroy took the duty and spent time roaming around New York City himself, eventually hitting the ball into the simulator while he worked on his swing.
Technical tweaks, mental recharge, and the new year brought an updated version of McIlroy. He won the Player Championship again at Pebble Beach, admitting that Scotty Schaeffler’s historic year motivated him and showed an impressive balance of control and aggression. It was as if the power of a superhero had been revealed for the first time.
Still, now there are more questions left than ever before. Can he do that with the Master? On Sunday he delivered long-awaited evidence that he could do it. Also, McIlroy was able to show how much he wanted.
“This was my 17th time here and I was wondering if it would be my time,” McIlroy said. “It was at least 11 years of pent-up emotion, if not 14, that came out of me on the final green in the playoffs.
“I got the job done.”
In a video posted by the PGA Tour on Sunday, McIlroy can be seen being asked about the size of his jacket. He’s a short one, either 38 or 40, depending on how much he eats each week.
“I like a little more European style,” McIlroy said in the video. “It fits a little more, tapering a little more, and pinching.”
On Sunday, Schaeffler helped McIlroy slip into his green jacket. It was 38 size, slightly larger and had not yet been adjusted to McIlroy’s preferred measurements. But as his shoulders hugged the wool cloth, McIlroy closed his eyes, raised his hands, tilted his head towards the sky.
The fit didn’t have to be perfect. Everything else was already there.