AUGUSTA — Rory McIlroy stood on the 7th tee at Augusta National on the precipice of something, but what? He began the day at 11 under par, thought he had to get to 15 under to win, and now he was nine under with 12 to play. He was two over par for the day and three over for the weekend. He had gone to the range Saturday night to fix whatever was pulling his shots “dead left,” then came out Sunday and hit two of his first four tee shots dead left.
Less than 24 hours earlier, McIlroy had commented on “the quality of the chasing pack,” and now he was in it. His six-stroke 36-hole lead was a distant memory. He was staring up at Cam Young and Justin Rose and staring down another Masters disappointment. This is when we would find out if he was really a new Grand Slam Rory or still the same old pre-green jacket Rory, and it turned out he was neither.
He was Tiger Woods with a Sunday lead.
With the wind whipping and the course daunting, McIlroy played the next 10 holes in four under par, and he did it without holing a single long putt. He made birdies from seven, six, seven and 11 feet. He only faced one par putt longer than three feet. The fact that McIlroy did not play his best golf in this stretch only made it more impressive: He simply refused to have any bad holes. Flags flapped, but McIlroy never did.
“Just absolutely delighted to be able to get it done,” he said Sunday night.
Rory McIlroy is a two-time Masters champion. Sixteen years ago, that sentence seemed inevitable. Thirteen months ago, it seemed impossible. Today, it seems ephemeral. McIlroy lived off the buzz of his 2025 Masters win for weeks, maybe even months. This time, the celebration will be shorter.
“I felt like the Grand Slam was the destination, and I realized it wasn't,” he said Sunday night. “I'm on this journey to—I don't know. I just won my sixth major, and I feel like I'm in a really good spot with my game and my body. 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.”
“I've got a couple of weeks off before I go back to play competitive golf, but I don't think I'll go through that lull of motivation or the sort of things that I was feeling last year post-winning this tournament.”
McIlroy is 36. His 10-year major drought was inexplicable at the time and will be even harder to understand as time goes on. McIlroy graded his driving this week as a B-minus and his iron play as a B: “My scrambling and my short game and my putting, that's what won me the tournament. I'd give my short game and my putting an A-plus.” Imagine what he’ll do when his ball-striking is on point. Actually, don’t imagine it. Look it up.
“I used to make it easy back in my early 20s when I was winning these things by eight shots,” McIlroy said.
He did indeed win both the 2011 U.S. Open and 2012 PGA by eight shots. This time, all he did was keep Scottie Scheffler at arm’s length. Scheffler has been so far and away the best player in the world for the last few years that there was no debate. Well, get ready to start debating.
McIlroy and Scheffler have won four of the last five major championships. Scheffler is still No. 1, but he finished second this week. Scheffler was one of just three players to post a bogey-free round Sunday, but he only birdied two of the first 14 holes, and that’s no way to stage a Masters comeback. It’s hard to play from behind when you’re playing from behind trees.
Even when McIlroy won the 2025 Masters, Scheffler was clearly the better and mentally tougher player. McIlroy cracked repeatedly that week but held on. But this week, McIlroy was the steely one who moved on from bad shots and even a bad day. Scheffler bemoaned his luck on Thursday (“it got so firm late in the day, it was pretty challenging”); Saturday (“I hit a really nice shot and got a wind switch”); and Sunday (“I would have liked it to have been a little bit more equal in terms of the firmness on Thursday and Friday.”)
Scheffler is still No 1. He has earned that. But if we are all fortunate enough to see Scheffler and McIlroy in the last group on Sunday of a major championship, that’s a toss-up.
McIlroy was ready Sunday. He was ready all week. He was even ready when he looked like he wasn’t ready at all. After a rough spin around Amen Corner Saturday, he birdied two of the next three holes.
McIlroy’s final round was an absolute clinic in course management. On the 8th hole, he used the left-to-right wind to hit a 225-yard draw to 26 feet. On No. 9, he gave himself an uphill six-foot birdie putt on the toughest green on the course. On No. 12, he remembered Tom Watson’s advice to him 17 years ago, waited for a wind he could trust, and hit a three-quarters nine-iron to seven feet.
When a rules official stopped Young, his playing partner, on the 13th hole, McIlroy waited back so he wouldn’t spend an uncomfortably long time staring at the shot he had to hit. He played that safely to the left, used his putter from a spot near where Young chose to chip, and made birdie while Young made par.
A year ago, McIlroy sat in his green jacket and marveled at his good luck: Every time he hit it in the trees that week, he seemed to have an opening for his next shot. There was no need to marvel this time. His only really lucky break came on his third shot on the par-5 15th, when McIlroy made a smart decision but a bad swing; he nearly dunked it in the water.
Scheffler did birdie 15 and 16, which was not so much a charge as a polite invitation for McIlroy to collapse. McIlroy stayed patient.
“I just said to myself on 17 tee, ‘I just need four more good swings,’” he said, before delivering the punchline: “I made one.”
He laughed. His tee shot on 18 was ghastly, but he hit an 8-iron into a greenside bunker and left himself a tap-in bogey putt for the win. McIlroy played every shot like a man whose campsite is being attacked by a bear: It was scary, sure, but he didn’t have to outrun the bear. He just had to outrun the other campers. In Woods’s five Masters wins, he played the 71st and 72nd holes in three over par. Nobody cut the sleeves off his green jackets.
“I thought it was so difficult to win last year because of trying to win the Masters and the Grand Slam,” he said. “Then this year I realized: It's just really difficult to win the Masters.”
Somewhere along the way, he realized something else: He is comfortable with it being difficult. That was never the case in his 20s. He freely admitted he played his best when he could go on birdie runs. Most of his PGA Tour wins came when a lot of players went low but he went lower.
If McIlroy had hit the ball Sunday like he did Saturday, there is no way he would have won the Masters. The wind was too strong. The course was too dry. But whatever he fixed, he fixed well enough. McIlroy shot 73–71 this weekend, which doesn’t sound so hot. But his friend Shane Lowry began the day two strokes off the lead and shot an 80.
There was a moment Saturday when McIlroy appeared to be teetering. He was in the 14th fairway, 130 yards from the hole, in position to stuff his approach shot close. Instead, he hit it long and left of the pin. The Sky Sports announcer who was following him said into his microphone, “Rory hit the worst wedge shot you’ve ever seen,” which was a hilarious bit of hyperbole: In last year’s final round, Rory hit the worst wedge shot of his life on the 13th hole. It nearly cost him the championship.
This was just a minor mishit. The ball landed on the green and rolled back. McIlroy made the birdie putt.
For so many years, every corner of Augusta National seemed to give Rory McIlroy horrible flashbacks. Fans and media folks had a few of those this weekend. McIlroy won because he never did.
More Masters Coverage on Sports Illustrated
- CBS’s Masters Broadcast Blew It at the End of Rory McIlroy’s Dramatic Victory at Augusta National
- How Amen Corner Changed The Masters (And Does Every Year)
- A Tradition Unlike Any Other at TBonz
- SI:AM | Rory McIlroy Refused to Unravel
- Sergio Garcia Had the Most Disgusting Moment at the Masters, and What He Said After It Made It Worse
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Rory McIlroy Was Ready for This Masters Even When It Looked Like He Wasn’t.
