The burden was very real. Rory McIlroy made that obvious the moment he won the 2025 Masters and crumbled to the 18th green overcome with emotion.
It had been 11 years since McIlroy had last won a major and that included 10-straight years of coming to Augusta National Golf Club for The Masters tournament with a chance to complete golf’s career grand slam. It was the narrative that followed McIlroy to every major he entered in recent years, and even more so after he fell just short during a few final-round meltdowns, mostly recently at last year’s U.S. Open.
What McIlroy is willing to admit now, after he joined Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods as the only men to win all four of golf’s majors, is how much doubt crept in as he watched other golfers from his generation win The Masters while he couldn’t seem to get over the hump there.
“As much as I like to say I’m not defined by my golf or my career, yeah, I am,’ McIlroy said in an interview with ESPN’s Marty Smith late Sunday night. ‘I think it’s hard because I came here in 2015 looking to win the career grand slam and Jordan Spieth wins his first major. And I just feel like a lot of my peers, I’ve watched over all the last decade win this golf tournament, and I’ve always just thought to myself, ‘When’s it gonna be my turn?’’
‘Sometimes I have to be reminded that you join this list of the five others that have won the career grand slam and I think that, to me, when I look back – hopefully, I’ve got quite a few years ahead of me and a long career left – but when I look back at my career and to have my name up alongside those other five in that club of winning the career grand slam, that’s probably going to be one of my proudest achievements in the game.”
McIlroy delighted the sports world Sunday by winning his first green jacket, besting Justin Rose in the first playoff hole after a wild final round of the 2025 Masters. McIlroy began playing alongside Bryson DeChambeau ‒ the golfer who took advantage of his missed putts to win the 2024 U.S. Open ‒ and promptly lost his two-shot lead with a double bogey on No. 1. McIlroy nonetheless built his lead back to four shots before his attempt to lay up on the par 5 13th wound up with a ball in the water and another double bogey. He then had the chance to win the tournament in regulation with a par putt on No. 18 that went just wide of the cup.
McIlroy told reporters ahead of Sunday’s final round that he planned to remain in a ‘bubble’ in between rounds and while on-course, in hopes of staying focused. But his mistake on No. 13 changed those plans.
‘When I made the 7 at 13, I needed to look at the (leaderboard). I needed to see where I was. I needed to see what the other guys were doing,’ McIlroy told ESPN. ‘I knew what Bryson was doing, but I needed to look at the board and I saw what Justin (Rose) was doing, what Ludvig (Åberg) was doing, so the bubble probably burst for a little bit and I was able to steady myself and make some really good swings coming in and I had a chance to win it in regulation. Didn’t quite happen, but again, I had to reset and I played a perfect playoff hole and I was able to get it done.”
But even McIlroy conceded, “I felt like I was trying to walk away from history at some point on the back nine.’
After it was over, though, he had gained new perspective on the toll the past decade took on him in pursuit of a green jacket that proved more elusive than he could have imagined when he won his first four majors in a four-year span (2011-14).
‘I think now that I’ve been able to do it, I maybe didn’t realize the burden I was carrying,’ McIlroy said. ‘I would show up here every year and I’d put my positive hat on and go in with the right attitude and I tried to do the right things and it never quite happened for me. And then I’d come back next year and I’d do the same thing.’
‘I just think time after time and year after year of doing that,’ he continued, ‘that burden sort of builds up and when I finally was able to do it and get over the line and win, I think that emotion that you saw was just 14 years of coming here and not getting the job done and just feeling that burden each and every year. It all just came out there on that last green.”