The walk explains the man.
Rory McIlroy does not walk down fairways so much as he trudges. Chest out, head bobbing, striding like every step is meant to cover the maximum amount of distance. McIlroy compares it to a dog chasing after the car. There is no time to consider how fast you’re moving as you’re thinking about what’s ahead, what could happen.
But in admitting that, McIlory is admitting that he is in his own head. And that has always been the scariest part of rooting for McIlroy. You know he can’t wipe away his mistakes, that his mind is running through thoughts and sometimes those thoughts are painful.
It is why Sunday afternoon at Augusta National Golf Club felt like walking through a haunted house, not wondering if there’s gonna be a scare, but trying to predict where it’s going to come from. And then it was 7:16 p.m. and McIlroy was on his hands and knees, crying into the 18th green.
He completed the career grand slam after nearly five hours of heartbreaks and recoveries. McIlroy (11-under) out-dueled Justin Rose in a playoff, sinking a 4-foot birdie putt to win the 89th Masters.
“It was all relief. There wasn’t much joy in that reaction,” McIlroy said. “I’ve been coming here 17 years, and it was a decade-plus of emotion that came out of me there.”
The scares had come and then they kept coming, and the scar tissue seemed to be adding layers. And then, finally, it was over. There was nothing more to fear.
“My battle today was with my mind and staying in the present,” he said.
Indeed. Which meant it was hard to watch McIlroy jaunt through Augusta National on Sunday afternoon and not wonder what was running through his mind. Rather, what demons had he been forced to confront.
Was he thinking about that Sunday round in 2011, when he hooked his tee shot on No. 10 into the Augusta cabins and watched his chance at a green jacket vanish?
Or the 2022 Open Championship, when he led on Sunday morning at St. Andrews before making par on his final eight holes and losing on Europe’s most-famous course?
Or the U.S. Open last year at Pinehurst, when he missed a pair of agonizingly close putts and watched from the scoring tent as another man, Bryson DeChambeau, seized the moment.
Because if he wasn’t thinking about those things, everyone else was. At 2:48 p.m. Sunday, the scoreboard behind the second green posted that McIlroy double-bogeyed the first hole. The man himself was thinking how Jon Rahm did the same thing in 2023 and went on to win.
Others were not so optimistic.
“Oh, he slept on it too long,” a patron shouted to no disagreement.
There has always been an assertion that things come easy to McIlroy. This was the prodigy whose dad wagered in 2004 that his son would win the Open Championship before he turned 26. And when his son lifted the Claret Jug at Royal Liverpool in 2014, his father cashed in.
Just mere months after coming unglued at Augusta National in 2011, he blew the field away by eight strokes at the U.S. Open. Within three years, he had three-fourths of the grand slam. And that green jacket? Oh, it was coming.
Perhaps the least-controversial thing to say during Masters week was that, eventually, McIlroy would win. Tiger Woods would say it. Ditto for Jack Nickulas and Tom Watson and Gary Player. And McIlroy would have to listen — knowing they were right and knowing it wasn’t quite that easy.
Rory McIlroy celebrates with the trophy after winning the Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club. Michael Madrid/Imagn Images “You know, these are idols of mine,” McIlroy said. “It’s very flattering that they all come up here and they believe in me and they believe in my abilities to be able to win this tournament and, you know, achieve the grand slam and all that.”
And, finally, it came. It came after he stepped to the tee at Golden Bell, with McIlroy a ripe victim for Rae’s Creek, and put his ball safely between the bunkers to go ahead by four shots over Rose and seven over DeChambeau.
It came after Rae’s Creek enacted revenge and swallowed up McIlroy’s inexplicable wedge shot on No. 13, giving him double bogey. It came after McIlroy walked to his second shot on the par-5 15th down one shot to Rose.
It came after McIlroy hooked one of the most-majestic 7-irons ever hit to within 6 feet, then proceeded to glance time and time again at the scoreboard before making birdie.
It came as McIlroy walked to the 18th tee needing to make par to fulfill his dreams … and then missed a 6-foot putt that cued up the Pinehurst flashbacks.
It came after enduring reminder after reminder of his past failures and then finally succeeding.
“It’s so hard to keep coming back every year and trying your best and not being able to get it done,” McIlroy said.
But what do you do? You keep walking: Chest out, head bobbing, striding like time is finite.
On the playoff hole, he lofted a gap wedge that hit the top of the slope and trickled right down to the hole.
Thirty-one minutes after he knocked in the putt and rose from the 18th green, frisbeed his hat, let out a primal scream then cried some more, McIlroy was sitting in a chair on the putting green of Augusta National.
Scottie Scheffler, the 2024 Masters champion, got up and grabbed the green jacket that belonged to McIlroy.
The man of the hour put his hands into his face. A moment to think back on the dreams before experiencing the reality. And then he slipped on his 34 regular, swung his arms out and looked to the sky.
The man who’s always walking could finally stop.
