23 times Rory McIlroy had stood on the 18th green a tournament winner since landing the last of his four Major Championships prior to arriving at Augusta National for his 11th attempt at the Career Grand Slam, 14th attempt at winning the Masters since his 2011 final-round collapse, and 17th attempt at earning a Green Jacket.
And those 23 wins have not been insignificant. Two Players Championships, two WGCs, four Rolex Series events, and three PGA Tour Signature Events are counted among them, but the Major Championship wins had dried up. As each year passed, the monkey on his back grew, starting off as a gibbon but had reached gorilla-size long before he finally shed it.
It’s seven years since he last found himself at the top of the leaderboard on the final day at Augusta National, but that came with 16 holes to play and by the time he’d walked off the third green, he was back on the ropes and never laid a glove on Patrick Reed for the rest of the way home. That was the day that many began speculating that Rory would have to win another major before he could finally be mentally and emotionally ready to take down the one he was missing.
But as the months and years passed, it wasn’t so much a case of would he ever win a Green Jacket, it was would he ever win another major at all? The 2022 Open Championship at St. Andrews, the 2023 US Open at LA Country Club were each heartbreaking in themselves, but on each occasion you could say he’d done what he’d set out to do on the final day and simply been beaten – Pinehurst in 2024 was different.
The mental hurdle manifested itself in short misses and miscalculations on the closing stretch, and he walked away crushed, knowing that he’d had it firmly in his grasp and had let it slip. Bryson DeChambeau kept the pressure on, but it was still Rory’s to lose and Rory lost it.
Winning an Olympic Gold Medal or the Irish Open at Royal County Down wouldn’t have fully made up for it, but it would’ve eased the pain a little, yet he found himself doing the same thing again, first seeing his Olympic dreams come splashing down and then throwing away a tournament that he’d been odds on to win once Rasmus Højgaard turned the screw. Wentworth followed, where an 18th hole birdie would’ve given him the win but he fluffed his lines on the closing par-5 and lost to Billy Horschel in the playoff.
Those defeats and the manner in which they came would be enough to make anybody question their abilities and mental fortitude, but somehow, not Rory.
That he won three times in the intervening months is as much testament to that mental strength as it is to his ability with a golf ball, but even wins at Pebble Beach and TPC Sawgrass were miniscule in comparison to finally taming Augusta National.
‘Taming’ might be a bit of a stretch. It was a slugfest of the highest order on Sunday, and his one-over final round suggests that the course got the decision on points, but he’d done enough over the previous three rounds to put himself in a position where he was the hunted rather than hunter.
The back nine on Sunday is where the Masters is traditionally won and lost, but I can’t recall it ever being won and lost so many times on one afternoon.
WhatsApp groups were signalling that it was all over after his birdie on 10, then signalling that it was all over again after he hit arguably the worst shot of his professional career on the 13th – the difference being that McIlroy was being crowned winner with the first message barrage and being labeled the game’s worst choker in the second.
It wouldn’t be fair to say it wasn’t pretty – the second shot into 15 might just be the prettiest golf shot I’ve ever seen – but it flipped back and forth from pretty to ugly in a manner in which few have ever seen before.
As the old saying goes, there are no pictures on a scorecard, but if ever a scorecard were worthy of pictures, it was Rory’s.
That hulking gorilla is now off his back, and it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t emphatically thrown off and stomped upon, it’s off.
I’d expect that he partied deep into the night and wakes up today with the sort of hangover that ordinarily would have a man in bitter remorse, but he’ll be on cloud nine and no hangover in the world will be able to bring him down.
Scottie Scheffler might have turned up at the RBC Heritage the week after winning his second Masters and won again, but Scheffler hasn’t gone through the major turmoil that Rory has for a decade. It’s hard to see Rory following suit, but deep down he’s always felt that he was the best player in the world and though he might sit at number two in the OWGR, he’s back at the top of the game.
The PGA Championship is just over a month away and Rory can arrive at Quail Hollow, one of his favourite stomping grounds, as a man freed from the shackles of failure. Had he conspired to lose at Augusta, the pressure would’ve been excruciating.
Now, win or lose at Quail Hollow, he’s banished ghosts over a decade in the making.
But he won’t be content with finishing his career with five majors total and the Career Grand Slam, he’ll be targeting Faldo’s six, Palmer’s seven and Watson’s eight, and shedding all lingering doubt that he’s the best player of his generation.
Easter Sunday might be a week away, but Palm Sunday was when Major Rory rose from the dead.
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