Nothing demonstrates the funny way that men talk to each other like the Masters

CHAMPIONS RUN: Rory McIlroy runs down the third fairway with his daughter, Poppy, during the Par 3 Contest at the Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club. Pic: Katie Goodale-Imagn Images.

The marvel of Rory McIlroy’s 2025 Masters triumph is how a minority sport on a pay-per-view channel at the depth of night somehow became collective ritual: All of our phones were alive with exhilaration but one message surpassed them all.

“Some occasion, some drama, some balls,” was my dad’s final judgment of a wild night. Twelve months later, there have been 20-odd texts in between until an absolute deluge arrived on Monday with the start of a working week at Augusta National.

Sport has always been a powerful vehicle for men to communicate with each other and golf is peculiarly suited to that given its leisurely pace of play. It is unlikely Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts factored in delays to allow the exchange of WhatsApp messages when they designed their fabled course, but it is a happy accident nevertheless.

Those interactions extend to the venue itself. They are illuminating in so many ways. Last Sunday marked the first time McIlroy could partake in the long-standing tradition where former winners are permitted to invite a guest. He played with his father, Gerry. They pucked a small ball around an immaculately-manicured field in celebration of their shared triumph.

“I guess just reminisce on the journey that we've been on,” McIlroy said this week. “It's a long way from Holywood, Northern Ireland.” Look, it is a familiar cliché to say men are bad at expressing emotion or communicating in general. That doesn’t make it any less true though. A significant portion don’t talk enough and don’t check in enough and don’t open up enough. Yet they do it, in their own unique and eccentric way, around sport.

It can be complicated. Much of that isn’t so much expressed as it is implied. Comedian Brian Regan has a bit on the difference between men and women. A good friend of his and his wife got divorced six months ago. They golfed together last week, the first time he had seen him since. When he returned, his wife asked, “How’s Gary?”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought ye were golfing together today?”

“We did.”

“And you don’t know how he is doing?”

“It never came up.”

Sport so often functions as a mechanism for first contact. The pedestal upon which we place the Masters only intensifies that process. Attend and you will hear from everyone. All over. The first sign of a self-indulgent social media post acknowledging your presence will register as a signal. Awe. Envy. Requests for merchandise. All reaching for something more.

“Hope you’re keeping well anyway.” The initial reach-out leads to real life updates. A former boss has had a child. That old school friend is getting married. The news that should be shared and celebrated anyway but every canvas needs a tentpole.

Shane Lowry chips to the second green during a practice round prior to the 2026 Masters. Pic: Andrew Redington/Getty Images.

On Wednesday, McIlroy teed off from the third tee box and started his walk down the fairway. As he walked, he spotted a New Jersey kid sporting a Galway GAA jacket and raised his hand in an innocuous wave.

Immediately, the boy’s father beamed and hugged him. “It’s magic for him to experience this,” his father told a local news station. He didn’t need to make the broader point that it was heightened by the fact they were experiencing it together.

It is an excuse to talk. To state the obvious. At Amen’s Corner, just after McIlroy stitched his approach within feet of the flag, an eager child in front of us turned to his father and announced the play-by-play: “Birdie.” When the putt pulled up short, he explained what that meant: “Par.” No one was perturbed by the plain commentary. His intended audience nodded with quiet pride. These are the small ways we signal that we know and care about the thing in the same way our fathers do.

Matty is a photographer who specialises in portrait shots. Those tight frames trained on golfer’s faces. McIlroy proves difficult to capture due to a slight dip during his powerful drive but the talented snapper has developed an understanding for that quirky movement after years of practice. He walked up the front nine, occasionally stopping to catch up with a familiar face.

A marshals’ volunteer spotted him and asked about one highly sought-after item from the merchandise store: “Any luck with a gnome?” The photographer had tears in his eyes when McIlroy sank his putt in the play-off last year.

This is his fifth Masters. Every time, he starts the week by walking to the payphones beside where the fifth doglegs left and ringing his old man to say, “what’s up?” The ritual extends beyond fathers and sons. 

In the extravagant media building, colleagues have cause to reunite and reflect. Pass quiet comments about how glad they are that a recent health scare passed or how sad they are at laid-off friends or how mad they are at the slow erosion of the industry.

Two volunteers at the first tee crossway sit side-by-side cracking jokes, smiling joyously, every single time you pass them. Nearby, a pair of kids playfully quarrel over a misjudged stroke on a bald chin, one teasing, “Don’t act like ya got some hair there yet!”

You haven’t seen anything until four men in deckchairs under the pine trees near the seventh tee, holding Crow's Nest craft beers and cigars the size of torches at eight in the morning. Only a companion arriving with those rye-green cups at the crack of dawn can prompt such sincere compliments: “You are the best.”

Men used to go to war. Now they go to expensive golf trips and talk about their ex-wives. Another takeaway from this week: there is so much talk about ex-wives.

None of this is to exclude the women who make up the patrons, cover or make the tournament what it is. You’ll hear your fair share of mansplaining too as patient partners listen politely to earnest explanations for club choices. It is a stain on the club itself that they took so long to admit female members.

The point remains that we come together for games and we stay together in life. Shane Lowry looked mildly taken aback when a member of the Irish media tour mentioned he had heard about the handmade ribbon he handed to his caddie Darren Reynolds last month in memory of his late father. It was his way of extending a gesture to his right-hand man.

“I did, yeah. I made a couple of ribbons just to show some respect,” he told us.

“I wasn’t able to travel back for the funeral; all my family went up. Yeah, it’s hard. It has been a hard few weeks for Darren. His dad had a tough run over the last while.”

And we know. We know sport shouldn’t be a primary conduit for basic human communication. We know it shouldn’t take an Instagram message about an awkward stance on the 12th to arrange a catch-up pint or that a father-son relationship should be built on more than a scorecard.

But in a world rife with endless bleak updates, in a country that is literally at war, there is something endearing about how this functions in the lives of men. An entertaining shorthand. How’s Lowry looking? Might as well be, how are you doing? Take comfort in this constant.

In reality, the question isn’t whether we can evolve beyond check-ins that centre around sport or the wonder of the Masters. It is more alarming: what would we do without it?