McIlroy has downplayed history all week but now he can join immortals

Rory McIlroy uses a tablet ahead of the final round from the Tournament Practice Area during the 2025 Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club on April 13, 2025 in Augusta, Georgia. (Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

One of the greatest things about the Masters is it’s the only major played at the same venue every year, creating a continuous thread that builds a tapestry the golf world comes to know by heart.

That familiarity can also be a curse, as Rory McIlroy can attest. Like so many tragic Augusta figures before him, McIlroy has long stood out like a blister on Augusta’s quilt. Heartache and longing have been staples of his Masters story almost from day one, and it’s been a long and painful process trying to erase that blemish.

It was 14 years ago when a cherubic 21-year-old McIlroy, playing in his third Masters, built a four-shot lead coming to the first tee on Sunday at Augusta. By the time he reached the back nine, his lead was down to one and his confidence was on fumes. His tee shot on 10 hit a tree and caromed to the footsteps of cabins nobody had ever seen before and led to a triple. It spiralled away from him from there as he came home in 43 strokes to shoot 80 and finish T15.

Gamely facing the music after his collapse, McIlroy called it “a character-building day.” “I'll come out stronger for it,” he promised, and two months later in his next major start in the US Open at Congressional, McIlroy claimed his first major victory in convincing fashion.

At Augusta National, however, the image of the young McIlroy doubled over his driver on the 13th tee in 2011 when he realised there was no hope left remains indelible.

“I’m very disappointed,” he said in 2011 after his round. “You know, I was leading this golf tournament with nine holes to go, and I just unraveled. Hit a bad tee shot on 10, and then never, never really recovered … just sort of lost it 10, 11, 12 and couldn’t really get it back.

“You know, it’s going to be hard to take for a few days, but I’ll get over it. I'm fine.

“I’ve got to take the positives, and the positives were I led this golf tournament for 63 holes.

"You know, I’ll have plenty more chances. I know that. It’s very disappointing what happened today. Hopefully it’ll build a little bit of character in me, as well.” 

McIlroy’s character has carried him through the ups and downs – and there have been plenty of both. Especially at Augusta.

Too often McIlroy has tried to do too much on a course that tempts him to take advantage of his prodigious skills. Too often, his wounds have been self-inflicted with nine-hole blowups that take him out of it.

The only other time McIlroy played in the final pairing – which has produced the majority of Masters winners – was in 2018 when he started the final round two shots behind Patrick Reed. He played his way into a contention with a Saturday 65, but when he missed a shortie for eagle on the second hole Sunday that could have gained a tie with Reed for the lead he suffered the same confidence hit that scuttled his hopes in 2011. He faded to fifth.

McIlroy had a backdoor top five in the 2020 Covid Masters in November and a charging runner-up in 2022 – both times never reasonably featuring for the green jacket because he’d dug himself too deep a hole in the opening rounds.

His confidence was overflowing entering the 2023 Masters in fine fiddle only to wash out with a missed cut that sent him into self-imposed exile for three weeks to collect himself. His self-assessment was that he got ahead of himself thinking a win was in his grasp.

“Having those thoughts, ‘Oh geez I think I’m going to have the best week I ever had at Augsuta,’ that’s not the right mindset,” he later said. “You need to be thinking about staying in the present. And I feel I didn’t quite do a good job of that because of how well I came in playing. I was almost, not overconfident. I just maybe got ahead of myself. It’s golf. It happens. I know more than anyone you have a ton of disappointments in this game. The good weeks are when you least expect them. That’s how it’s been for me."

McIlroy has intentionally downplayed all the history at his fingertips this week, keeping himself grounded and focused on the task in front of him day. He refused to answer questions looking back at 2011.

“That was 14 years ago. I have no idea,” he said of how he felt them. “Again, I’m glad I have a short memory.” His conversations with sports psychologist Bob Rotella focus on staying present and “chasing a feeling” instead of chasing a result.

“I’ve talked about trying to chase a feeling out there, you know, if I can have that feeling,” McIlroy said. “And if I can go home tonight and look in the mirror before I go to bed and be like, that’s the way I want to feel when I play golf, that, to me, is a victory.” 

He’s spent all week in Augusta distracting himself from the potential mental pitfalls that can overcome someone who’s been stuck on history’s doorstep for more than a decade – watching “Bridgerton” with his wife, Erica; “Zootopia” with his daughter, Poppy; Premier League to kill time in the mornings; reading John Grisham’s “The Reckoning” to fill the gaps and keep him off his phone.

Sunday was the moment of truth when McIlroy was in position, at long last, to weave a little Irish green in the tapestry of the Masters and himself into the annals of golfing immortals.