CHARLOTTE, N.C. — It has been just over a month since Rory McIlroy’s knees buckled under the weight of a childhood dream finally achieved.
McIlroy’s victory at the Masters and the completion of the career Grand Slam have produced an afterglow that has not yet faded from the consciousness of the sport. Just listen to what the best players in the world have said this week about his accomplishment.
Justin Thomas said watching McIlroy was a good reminder of how much the feat is something he wants for himself, prompting some combination of drive and jealousy. Scottie Scheffler marveled at the work McIlroy has put in throughout his career to win all four majors. Jordan Spieth, who is a PGA Championship away from his own career Grand Slam, called it inspiring.
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“You could tell it was a harder win — most of the time he makes it look a lot easier,” Spieth said. “So that obviously was on the forefront of his mind. Something like that has not been done by many people, and there’s a reason why.”
“I think it’s been a very difficult hurdle to overcome, and you could see his emotion towards the end,” Jon Rahm said. “He’s had so many chances. It’s just, it’s never easy. It’s very difficult. I would not be one bit surprised if this lifted a weight off his shoulders that could get him going on another run.”
Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that McIlroy’s first major since conquering the career Grand Slam happens to be taking place at Quail Hollow Country Club, a venue that he has turned into his personal trophy vending machine over the years (he has won there four times) and one that makes him the clear tournament favorite going into this week.
And yet as quickly as all of us, including Rahm, are prepared to move his narrative to the next frontier — “How many majors can he win now?” — and characterize McIlroy as freed up after capturing his white whale, it is McIlroy himself who seems to want to slow things down, to bask in the moment just a little longer and appreciate it for what he says it could be.
“I still want to create a lot of other highlights and high points, but I’m not sure if any other win will live up to what happened a few weeks ago,” McIlroy said. “I’m still going to set myself goals. I’m still going to try to achieve certain things. But I sit here knowing that that very well could be the highlight of my career.”
How could it not be?
The way that McIlroy finally secured the elusive green jacket, the way he showed his flaws, talent and resiliency over 72 grueling holes and then, the way he celebrated — less of an emphatic ecstasy and more of an emotional sigh of relief. It all amounted to a moment that will be etched in history, a moment that McIlroy himself wants to remember with his own eyes and body and not as part of a video clip played for years to come.
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Rory McIlroy ends his long wait for a fifth major title and completes a career Grand Slam with a dramatic playoff victory over Justin Rose at Augusta.
“I’ve tried not to watch it a lot because I want to remember the feelings,” McIlroy said. “But anytime I have, I well up. I still feel like I want to cry. I’ve never felt a release like that before, and I might never feel a release like that again. That could be a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and it was a very cool moment.”
To hear McIlroy speak on Wednesday was to wonder if his realization that the 2025 Masters could be his defining moment, that being able to experience that feeling, means not that McIlroy will continue to chase after more majors with a newfound freedom but rather that he has found something that professional athletes are almost always taught to avoid: satisfaction.
“I have achieved everything that I’ve wanted — I’ve done everything I’ve wanted to do in the game,” he said. “I dreamed as a child of becoming the best player in the world and winning all the majors. I’ve done that. Everything beyond this, for however long I decide to play the game competitively, is a bonus.”
Winning a Masters to end his major drought and complete the career Grand Slam put a neatly tied bow on the narrative that had surrounded him. It was a 2-for-1 that felt equal parts preordained and impossible. So it’s not just satisfaction and fulfillment that McIlroy seems to have found but also perspective. The destination was worth the arduous journey, but it didn’t make it any less taxing.
“I think everyone saw how hard having a north star is and being able to get over the line,” McIlroy said. “I feel like I sort of burdened myself with the career Grand Slam stuff, and I want to enjoy this.”
In the past, McIlroy has said he wants to be considered the best European player to play the game (only two other Europeans have more majors than he does) and that he wants to win an away Ryder Cup (this year’s event at Bethpage Black gives him that opportunity), but it is all secondary to being able to do what he did at Augusta this year. For a player like McIlroy, whose most impressive trait is his longevity at the top of the game, sheer quantity of wins or majors does not appear to be a priority.
“I’ve always said I’m never going to put a number on it. The numbers tell one story, but it’s not — mightn’t be the full story,” he said. “I want to enjoy what I’ve achieved, and I want to enjoy the last decade or whatever of my career.”
At 36, it’s easy to forget that McIlroy has been a professional now for 18 years. The lack of a Masters took up so much space in his story that, with it now completed, he seems to be hinting at entering a different stage of his career, one that will also begin to pose the question of much longer he wants to play.
McIlroy has already said, for example, that he will not play Champions Tour golf and that something will have gone terribly wrong if he feels like he has to compete at 50 years old. You can see it too in the way he is shifting his schedule, playing more tournaments abroad, fewer tournaments overall and committing to international events such as the Irish Open last year and two upcoming Australian Opens at Royal Melbourne and Kingston Heath. Recently, he also said he no longer cares about where professional golf ends up regarding the LIV-PGA Tour negotiations.
But when it comes to golf in this new reality, McIlroy — who is undoubtedly playing the best golf in the world right now — insists that he will not change his attitude or his approach.
On Thursday morning, he will walk to the first tee of a tournament and begin his quest for a victory like he has done hundreds of times. Nothing about what he has done before will change what he is trying to accomplish. Perhaps he will feel lighter, perhaps he will not put as much pressure on his game or perhaps he’ll surprise himself come Sunday, if he finds himself in the hunt, and feel a modicum of the competitive juice he felt five Sundays ago.
It is not that McIlroy’s competitiveness will be diluted in any way now, but rather that, as he sits atop the mountain that took nearly 11 years to climb, McIlroy is telling us that with a Masters and a career Grand Slam now on his résumé, he has found his version of golfing nirvana.
“It’s everything I thought it would be,” McIlroy said.
