Augusta, Ga. – When Rory McIlroy, not only once had gone once, but twice the chance to win the masters, ward off several players and to overcome his mistakes during an emotional 19 Golf Golf.
He had finally conquered Mount Everest. Now there was only one thing to do. He red and tear -like eyes turned to his friends and expressed the words he had hoped for over a decade:
“I have to get a green jacket.”
Selection of the publisher
2 related
On Sunday, Augustas Roars were ready to serve McIlroy during his breakthrough with the pressure of an 11-year-old big drought. But when he went through a roller coaster ride through a round of tours, many whisper also picked the site.
“Oh my god,” said a patron after McIlroy had done in the first hole double bogey.
“They are the nerves,” said one other when Mcilroy Bryson Dechambeau handed over the lead on the second.
A patron covered his face with his hands: “He does it again.”
When Mcilroy twice cooked the 13th hole after donating his ball to Rae's Creek, he added another bogey on the 14th and countered his birdie against 17 with a bogey on the last hole: another opportunity that had disappeared on the largest stage so far. Even McIlroy thought it.
“Today there were points on the back nine when I thought: 'Did I let it slide again?',” Said Mcilroy. “My fight today was with myself. It wasn't with anyone else.”
Rory McIlroy won his first green jacket at the 2025 Masters. EPA/CJ Gunther
This was a performance over a decade in the creation. The close calls and heartache may have occurred in the past, but the scar tissue was lingered in the room between victory and defeat. So it was fitting that it happened that a six-shot lead with eight holes was not enough that every shot that mashed the Mcilroy hit wore a seismic gravity that contained the narrative power to bring it back to the lost side or at the end, after a playoff in which he found relief.
“It is the best day of my golf life,” said Mcilroy. “I literally made my dreams come true.”
A victory in St. Andrews in 2022 would have been poetic. The victory in the US Open in the Los Angeles Country Club in 2023 would have been a concrete proof of the development of his game. Triumph in Pinehurst last year could have been an epic way to end his main thunder.
But none of these victories would have answered the question that had been left: could McIlroy win in Augusta?
For McIlroy, the importance of this tournament is personally because it marked its golf free. He flooded memories of the tournament, when he was only 7 years old, with his father, when he spoke on Tuesday and Sunday evening.
“I think all of this comes back to me,” said Mcilroy. “Remember why I fell in love with the game.”
Two years after his professional in 2007, McIlroy made his debut at the 2009 Masters and took 20th place. Since then, he has endured 17-overall calls and no-show in any total. The golf world and its marquee tournament have changed over two decades. So has McIlroy.
The overgrown and dark curly hair that framed his face at the age of 17 and drove down the Magnolia Lane has disappeared. In his place McIlroy has a narrower cut. He bears the course of time on his gray temples, an indication of how long he was in sports, and a memory of how often he had the chance to do what he did on Sunday by finally reaching the apogue of sport: a career -grandy slam.
“I think I've worn this burden since August 2014,” said McIlroy. “It is very difficult. It was difficult today.”
McIlroy spoke in detail about the nerves that he felt throughout the Sunday. He spoke about pressure, both self -imposed and what he felt when sizes like Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods predicted that Mcilroy would win the masters and talked about it as if it were a question.
What the performance on Sunday showed again in a frenzied snapshot was that Mcilroy has never been nicklaus or Woods. It's not that McIlroy's game is not that good. But his journey played very similar to this week with his four double bogeys and puzzling swings: the ups and downs are just as part of the fabric of his fable as everything.
“You have to be an eternal optimist,” said Mcilroy. “I really think I'm a better player now than 10 years ago.”
His creed of patience, faith and resistance in view of the repeated disappointment reached his Nadir last year in Pinehurst. The defeat left the immediate future of Mcilroy's career unsettled and needed an apparently hard reset. McIlroy undertook, took the time out and went through New York City alone, finally hit balls into a simulator when he worked on his swing.
A technical tweak, a mental charging and a new year brought an updated version of Mcilroy. He won on the Pebble Beach and then again at the Players Championship and recognized how Scottie Scheffler's historical year had motivated him and presented a striking balance between control and aggression. It was as if the forces of a superhero were obvious for the first time.
And yet the question remained more than ever: could he do it with the masters? On Sunday he provided the long -awaited proof that he could. It also made it possible to show McIlroy how much he wanted.
1:56
Rory in tears after winning 2025 Masters
An overwhelmed Rory McIlroy wins the 2025 Masters in a playoff against Justin Rose to become just the sixth golfer in the story that wins a career grand slam.
“This is my 17th time here and me [had] Asked to ask if it would ever be my time, “said Mcilroy.
“I did the job.”
In a video of the PGA Tour last Sunday, McIlroy is asked about his size of his jacket. He is 38 or 40 short, he says, depending on how much he eats every week.
“I like it a bit of European style,” says Mcilroy in the video. “A little more assembled, a little more tapered and trapped.”
On Sunday, Scheffler McIlroy helped the green jacket. The size was 38 regular, a little large and not tailored to McIlroys preferred measurements. But when his shoulders hugged the woolen fabric, McIlroy closed his eyes, raised his hands and tilted his head to the sky.
The fit did not have to be perfect; Everything else was already.
