It looked like a collapse, turned into a coronation, then morphed into a dogfight.
The career Grand Slam had been such a stubborn goal for Rory McIlroy that when the quest finally came to fruition, he had been pushed to the max.
In the 89th Masters, on his 11th attempt to complete the Grand Slam with a Green Jacket, during one of the most turbulent final rounds to be contested in the long history of Augusta National, McIlroy succeeded in joining a handful of legends in winning all four modern major championships.
A wild and woolly 18 holes wasn’t enough to decide the outcome. Thanks to a sterling 66 by Justin Rose and errors of his own that sabotaged some fantastic play that boosted hopes and prompted chants from the patrons – “Roar-eee! Roar-eee! Roar-eee!” – McIlroy was extended to further golf.
The playoff was short and, for the champion and so many who had been in his corner while he sought for a decade to capture an elusive missing link in his career, wonderfully sweet.
On the par-4 18th – which shortly before he had bogeyed on the final hole of regulation to drop back into a tie at 11-under 277 with the fast-closing Englishman – McIlroy hit a 125-yard gap wedge that landed on a slope behind the pin and rolled back down to four feet. After Rose missed a 15-foot birdie attempt, McIlroy sank his putt and dropped to the ground, a decade-long burden at last replaced by opportunity seized.
“Just a complete roller coaster of emotions today,” McIlroy said. “What came out of me on the last green there in the playoff was at least 11 years, if not 14 years, of pent-up emotion.”
With his hard-fought victory, McIlroy, 35, joined Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods as players with at least one victory at the Masters, the U.S. Open, The Open Championship and the PGA Championship. Sarazen completed his Slam in Augusta, too, but that was in 1935, in the Tournament’s formative years.
Sunday was the kind of spring day – full sunshine, 70 degrees, the slightest of breezes – that someone enduring a hard winter in the north of Ireland, McIlroy’s homeland, would dream about. Thanks to McIlroy’s birdie on the first extra hole, this blue-sky 13th of April will be forever known as the realization of his biggest golf dream, but it was a squiggly path to victory.
“There were points in my career where I didn’t know if I would have this nice garment over my shoulders,” McIlroy said as he conducted his postround press conference in his Green Jacket, a 38 regular. “I didn’t make it easy today. I certainly didn’t make it easy. I was nervous. It was one of the toughest days I’ve ever had on the golf course.”
McIlroy started the final round two strokes in front of Bryson DeChambeau, but that cushion was short-lived. He double bogeyed the first hole to fall into a tie, as the large gallery around the green fell into silence. On his way to the second tee, he remembered that the 2023 Masters champion Jon Rahm had recovered from an opening-hole double bogey in his first round that year and bounced back to shoot 65.
McIlroy came off the canvas quickly, with birdies at the third and fourth holes. A birdie at the ninth gave him a four-stroke lead as he went to the second nine. He maintained that advantage (over Rose and Ludvig Åberg) as he got to the 13th hole, having avoided big blunders at the outset of the second nine that cost him dearly when he had the lead with nine holes to play in 2011.
But trouble came on his third shot at No. 13. From 86 yards, he wedged his third shot into the tributary of Rae’s Creek and made a double bogey, his fourth of the week. “His world is spinning right now,” CBS analyst Trevor Immelman said as McIlroy bogeyed the 14th.
Then McIlroy righted the ship – again. A glorious hooking 7-iron from 207 yards set up a two-putt birdie on No. 15. On the par-4 17th, he launched a drawing 8-iron approach from 184 yards. As it flew toward the green, McIlroy walked forward and pleaded “Go!” with every stride until he saw its destination, two feet from the cup. The birdie moved McIlroy back to 12-under and in the lead.
Up ahead, Rose was polishing off a stunning effort that saw him birdie the entirety of Amen Corner as he mounted a charge from seven back starting the day. “Around the middle of the round, I just kind of went into the place that you dream about going to,” said Rose. “I felt so good with my game. Felt so good with my mind. I began to sense that I was playing my way into the tournament. I was laser-focused out there.”
Rose holed a 20-footer at the last hole to get back to 11-under. A par would have salted away victory for McIlroy, but he hit into the right greenside bunker from 125 yards and missed a five-foot par putt.
As McIlroy went to replay No. 18, his caddie, Harry Diamond, told him that at the start of the week they would have taken having a chance to win a Green Jacket in a playoff. The remark helped McIlroy reset from the topsy-turvy final round and closing bogey. Rose joined Ben Hogan as the only golfers to lose two Masters playoffs. Hogan was beaten by Byron Nelson in 1942 and Sam Snead in 1954.
“Today I hit a lot of quality shots under pressure, and I felt like I was getting stronger and stronger and stronger as the round was going on,” Rose said. “I felt so good with my game, good with my emotions, and I’m super proud of that.”
As DeChambeau sputtered, shooting 75 to tie for fifth, it was Rose who pressed McIlroy to the limit, forcing him to rely on a reservoir of positivity that he had tried keep full even during down times in pursuit of a Green Jacket and the Grand Slam.
“You have to be the eternal optimist in this game,” McIlroy said. “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.’ It’s so hard to stay patient. It’s so hard to keep coming back every year and trying your best and not being able to get it done. There were points on the back nine today, I thought, ‘Have I let this slip again?’ But I responded with some clutch shots when I needed to, and really proud of myself for that.”
The tough losses had left dents. The tough moments of Sunday caused pause. But McIlroy kept moving, through legs that felt like jelly on the first tee, and errors that he would love to have back, all the way until he had succeeded. It had been hard, and hard-earned. He was the best kind of tired, and it was the best kind of wonderful.
