AUGUSTA, Ga. — Rory McIlroy stood over his ball in the 18th fairway at Augusta National, reeling.
Over the course of the previous 90 minutes, he’d bungled away a 5-shot lead in the final round of the Masters, well on his way to the biggest choke job of his career — and maybe any in the 89-year history of the tournament.
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Then he launched a 126-yard gap wedge high into the Augusta sky that settled four feet from the cup in a sudden-death playoff with Justin Rose — winner gets the green jacket.
For the rest of his career, he will not hit a more important shot, for this one righted his sinking ship straight out of Rae’s Creek and into Butler Cabin where — after draining the four-footer to defeat Rose — he would finally slip on the elusive green jacket and complete the career grand slam.
“I have dreamt about that moment for as long as I can remember,” he said Sunday night, wearing a 38-regular green jacket. “There were points in my career where I didn’t know if I would have this nice garment over my shoulders, but I didn’t make it easy today. I certainly didn’t make it easy.”
Anyone who’s followed a minute of golf knows the Saga of Rory McIlroy — that he won four majors by the age of 25 — something only he, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods had done, but hadn’t won another since.
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Nearly eleven years and counting it had been — 3,882 days since he won the 2014 PGA Championship — a streak so brutally long that it stretched from the boyish kid with curly locks to the chiseled veteran with gray creeping down his sideburns.
He entered Sunday’s final round with a two-shot lead over Bryson DeChambeau in what was anticipated to be a battle between the game’s two biggest heavyweights.
In his 17th try, Rory McIlroy finally has his green jacket. (AP/Ashley Landis)
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
But that never really materialized. After an early slip — a double-bogey at the first — McIroy ran away from the field with back-to-back birdies at Nos. 3 and 4. Two more birdies at Nos. 9 and 10 vaulted him to 14-under for the tournament.
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With eight holes to play, he held a five-shot lead over a field that seemed either incapable of making a run or simply resigned that the tournament was over — that a McIlroy win was inevitable.
Then came a seemingly innocuous bogey at 11, a chip in the water at 13 that led to a double, a drive into the trees at 14 that led to another bogey, and suddenly … the demons that have haunted him over these 11 years were awoken, only now they were barking louder than ever.
McIlroy hadn’t just been caught, he’d lost the lead entirely to a suddenly surging Rose, who’d come from seven down on the back nine to grab the lead.
Of all the majors McIlroy’s held the lead in in the final round, this should have been the most relaxing back-nine stroll of his life — a coronation of a brilliant career, culminating in finally completing the career grand slam.
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But it was all falling apart, an Irish tragedy playing out in real time on golf’s grandest stage.
He’d have to grind if he was going to turn tragedy back into triumph.
It started with a brilliant approach at 15, setting up a birdie, followed by another birdie at 17.
But when Rose drained a seemingly impossible 20-footer for birdie on 18, it meant McIlroy would need to par 18 to win. He didn’t … equally impossibly missing a 5-footer, setting up the one-hole playoff.
The quickness of it all is nerve wracking, if not slightly unfair — narrowing the entirety of a 72-hole tournament down to just one hole. But it is what it is.
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Rose had been in this position before, losing in a playoff to Sergio Garcia back in 2017. He found the fairway first, splitting the narrow tunnel that is the 18th tee, as did McIlroy. Then Rose put his approach in tight, to 15 feet. McIlroy was next.
After missing the putt to win less than 15 minutes earlier, his caddie and lifelong friend Harry Diamond said to him as they rode on the cart to the 18th, “Well, Pal, we would have taken this on Monday morning.”
“I’m like, ‘Yeah, absolutely we would have,'” McIlroy said after.
That reset him, calmed him as he stood in the 18th fairway, needing to match Rose. Which he did, and then some — putting it to just four feet.
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After Rose missed, McIlroy got a second chance to win the Masters — the tournament that had eluded him … forever.
When the putt fell, McIlroy let out a primal scream, releasing the scar tissue of emotion that had built up over the last 11 years — 14 if you count his meltdown at the 2011 Masters. Then he fell to his knees.
“It was all relief,” he said. “There wasn’t much joy in that reaction. It was all relief. …
“I’ve been coming here 17 years, and it was a decade-plus of emotion that came out of me there.”
For more than a decade, he’s been answering the same question every time he arrived at Augusta National: Why haven’t you won here? Late Sunday night, he entered the interview room at Augusta National’s press center, and began with a question of his own:
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“I’d like to start this press conference with a question myself: What are we all going to talk about next year?”
Touché, but probably … when are you going to win it again?
