Earlier this year, Rory McIlroy set out the main goals for the rest of his career. “Winning the Masters, winning an Olympic medal and winning another away Ryder Cup.” We’ll get back to the first in a moment, but I thought that was an admirably impressive threesome. Not even necessarily an Olympic gold medal; just a medal. He was so enchanted by the no-pay-for-play atmosphere in Paris last summer that it has firmly fired him up for Los Angeles in 2028. And how he has moved on from his 2009 comment about the Ryder Cup being “an exhibition”. He was on the last team of either side to win an away Ryder Cup, at Medinah in 2012, and clearly he will be key to Europe’s attempt to retain the trophy at Bethpage in September.
But first there was this. The Masters. It could have, should have, been the first major he won, in 2011. Augusta National had other ideas, eating him up with an 80 on Sunday, obliterating his four-shot 54-hole lead. A little over three years’ later he had won the US Open, the Open Championship and the USPGA Championship twice. Four majors. He was still stuck on four as he made his way down Magnolia Lane at the beginning of last week. Thirteen times previously since his sickening collapse he had headed to the Masters trying to right the wrong; ten times previously trying to complete the career Grand Slam. Now he has. Twenty-one times since winning the PGA in 2014 he had finished in the top-10 in a major championship without winning one. Now he has. Again.
It wasn't a dream. #themasters pic.twitter.com/JIWeyeShDE
— The Masters (@TheMasters) April 14, 2025
That he played the last round in the company of Bryson DeChambeau, the man who heartbreakingly denied him the US Open last June, would have been particularly pleasing. On Sunday, McIlroy described that experience as “awful”. This was more like “awesome”. There were some startling stats along the way. He became the first man to win the Masters having made four double-bogeys; two on Thursday and two on Sunday. In between, he had four threes in a row to start his back nine on Friday and six threes in a row to start his front nine on Saturday. All told, he had 30 threes last week. “Is that good?” he asked with a grin.
In the short time since his victory, McIlroy has routinely been cited as the sixth member of the ‘Grand Slam Club’: the winner of all four major championships. In order, these are Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and now McIlroy. This was even done by Augusta National itself, the club founded by Bobby Jones, the greatest amateur golfer in history. Which of itself is somewhat curious.
The concept of the Grand Slam was founded upon what Jones did in 1930, when he achieved the ‘Impregnable Quadrilateral’, the original Grand Slam – winning the Open and Amateur Championship of the United States and Great Britain in the same year. It was while contemplating the modern equivalent in 1960, when he had already won the Masters and the US Open, that Arnold Palmer alighted upon the USPGA Championship as the tournament that would complete the set as regards professional golf.
Sadly for Arnold, he never got to win that one; the career slam would elude him forever. Happily for Rory, that is no longer the case for him. As he said to some amusement when it was all over: “I’d like to start this press conference with a question myself.” Pause. “What are we all going to talk about next year?”
You can follow Robert Green on Twitter @robrtgreen and enjoy his other blog f-factors.com as well as his golf archive on robertgreen-golf.com
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