Commentary: Rory McIlroy’s career hasn’t been easy. Why would his Masters win be?

AUGUSTA, Ga. – There is a version of Rory McIlroy’s career that is easier, the one in which, 10 years ago, Jack Nicklaus said: “Rory’s going to win plenty of Masters. He’s going to win a lot more majors” – and he went on to win plenty of Masters and a lot more majors. Back then, it seemed not just possible. It felt probable.

What played out – as he grew from boy to man, as he became a husband and a father, as he won golf tournaments across the globe and gained generational wealth – was harder, so much harder. His 35-year-old face is covered not only by the freckles of his youth. He has, by now, creases at the corners of his eyes, each storing a different disappointment.

It hasn’t been easy. Why make things easy Sunday? Instead, make them damn near impossible. It fits.

McIlroy lost the Masters on the first hole and on the 13th, where he made his third and fourth double bogeys of the week. He lost it with tentative putts for eagle at 15 and for birdie at 16. He lost it with a meek, five-foot putt for par at the 18th, where his bogey dropped him into a playoff with Justin Rose.

And then he won it. Finally, he won it.

“I didn’t make it easy today,” McIlroy said. “I certainly didn’t make it easy. I was nervous.”

As was all of golf. And yet read the following sentence: Rory McIlroy is a Masters champion.

Now read this one: Rory McIlroy completed the career Grand Slam.

Go back and do it again. It’s worth it. Reread them enough, and you might believe they’re both true.

“We saw a part of history today,” said Rose, the gracious Englishman who lost in a playoff here for the second time. “Someone won a career Grand Slam. It’s a momentous day in the game of golf.”

To understand how hard this was – both over 17 appearances at Augusta National GC and over an extraordinary Sunday that, even by Masters standards, was exceptionally wild – look only at McIlroy as he willed in the final two-foot putt for birdie at 18, the first playoff hole. He tossed his putter in the air, not that he knew what he was doing. He put both his hands to his head.

Then he buckled. He absolutely buckled. He fell to the ground, put his head on the green. His body convulsed.

“I’ve carried that burden since August 2014,” McIlroy said, thinking back to the summer he won both the British Open and the PGA Championship and stood only the Masters away from the Grand Slam. “It’s nearly 11 years. And not just about winning my next major but the career Grand Slam, trying to join a group of five players to do it, watching a lot of my peers get green jackets in the process. It’s been difficult.”

In those sobs were all the errant shots and boneheaded decisions – both Sunday and scattered across his past. In those sobs were all the questions he faced every time he stepped on this property, about how and why it hadn’t happened, unsure whether it ever would.

“It was all relief,” McIlroy said. “There wasn’t much joy in that reaction. It was all relief. And then the joy came pretty soon after that.”

Part of McIlroy’s appeal – and given the chants of “Ror-y! Ror-y!” that rang across the course from daybreak to sundown, the appeal was apparent – is his public vulnerability. He hasn’t always addressed his gut punches in the moment. But he has been frank and introspective about them.

So, then, Augusta. At times over his career – shoot, at times Sunday – it felt as if maybe he should take the Masters off his schedule.

“I started to wonder,” McIlroy said, “if it would ever be my time.”

Gee, Rory. Why?

Because, when you began the day with a two-shot lead over Bryson DeChambeau, you allowed it to evaporate in all of 16 minutes with a three-putt for double bogey at the first? Or because, when you were holding a four-shot lead, you inexplicably rinsed a wedge into the tributary of Rae’s Creek that protects the par-5 13th, the next inexcusable double?

Or because …

Let’s stop. This wasn’t just about the funhouse mirror that was Sunday. This was about the arc of a career, one that didn’t play out as Nicklaus predicted. The vision was all lollipops and candy canes. This involved sutures and triage.

Think about what McIlroy said right here 14 years ago when, as a 21-year-old, he carried a four-shot lead into the final round, watched it be whittled to one at the turn and admitted, “I just unraveled.” He shot 80.

“It’s a Sunday at a major, what it can do,” McIlroy said. “This was my first experience at it, and hopefully the next time I’m in this position, I’ll be able to handle it a little better. … But it was a character-building day.”

The next time he teed it up in a major, he walloped the field in the U.S. Open at Congressional. It felt like the first of many. But the disappointments total so many more.

In 2022, in the British Open at St. Andrews, he entered the final round tied with Viktor Hovland, scarcely made a mistake, couldn’t hole a putt and watched as Cameron Smith roared from behind, erasing a four-shot deficit.

“Whenever you put yourself in that shining light,” McIlroy said then, “you’re going to have to deal with setbacks and deal with failures. Today is one of those times. But I just have to dust myself off and come again and keep working hard and keep believing.”

He showed up at the U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club the following year. He awoke Sunday down by a shot, birdied the first to tie for the lead – and never made another birdie the rest of the day. He lost to Wyndham Clark by one.

“When I do finally win this next major,” he said afterward, “it’s going to be really, really sweet. I would go through 100 Sundays like this to get my hands on another major championship.”

Maybe it wasn’t 100 Sundays like that. Maybe it just felt that way because his professional failings played out in public and felt personal. They were open wounds for him but also those who put their faith in him.

He is a different man now than, say, when he let that 2011 Masters slip away in such crippling fashion.

“I probably didn’t understand myself,” he said. “I didn’t understand why I got myself in a great position in 2011, and I probably didn’t understand why I let it slip, in a way.”

Maybe he doesn’t understand why he won it Sunday, either. But at this point, who cares? Rory McIlroy is wearing a green jacket. Rory McIlroy is a Masters champion. He made it ridiculously hard on himself to don that coat and lift that trophy. In a career that has no parallel, that fits.