In February he won at Pebble Beach, a course he described as a “cathedral” of the game. In March he won the Players Championship, the so-called fifth major until the banning of LIV golfers put a stop to that. Above all else, in April he at last won the Masters, a tournament which to some extent or other had tormented him since 2011. He thus ended an 11-year major-championship drought and, an even bigger deal, completed the career Grand Slam. Heading into May, things could hardly have looked any rosier for Rory McIlroy. Since then, not so much.
At the USPGA Championship, he placed 47th. We now know that he was disconcerted there because his driver had been found to be non-conforming under USGA regulations. Such testing and accidental non-compliance is not unusual but the results are supposed to remain confidential. McIlroy’s name was leaked and published. His unhappiness about this was the primary factor behind his unusual refusal to engage in any media duties during that championship. With a new driver duly in his bag at the RBC Canadian Open last week, he found only 13 of 28 fairways and shot rounds of 71-78, nine over par. The cut fell at three under.
I guess one thing this shows in part is something we all know but which this illustrates so vividly: no one ever really gets golf. (OK, Tiger did for a while, and Scottie has sometimes recently given the impression he might be close to it.) At a humbler level, when our pursuit of personal golfing perfection sees us, say, break 80 one day and then shoot 95 the next, we can scarcely comprehend how satisfaction has so speedily become incompetence. But this doesn’t only apply to us. It applies to them as well.
"I think there's still learnings that you have to take from a day like today."
Rory reflects on missing his first cut since @TheOpen in 2024. pic.twitter.com/R7WEo8achO
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) June 6, 2025
I obviously don’t know what your most powerful recollection is of McIlroy’s triumph at Augusta. For me it came on the par-five 15th on Sunday, after he had just dropped three shots in two holes. His second shot there set off, hooked around a tree and then launched into space like something from a TikTok promotion for an Elon Musk product, the on-screen Shot Tracer enhancing that effect. His ball ended five feet from the cup. “Absolutely incredible,” Nick Faldo said on commentary. The fact that McIlroy missed the short eagle putt was rather an anti-climax but ultimately it didn’t matter.
In less than two months, he has gone from winning the Masters to finishing ahead of only four other players last Friday evening in Toronto. It will surely be a tough ask for him to get things straight (literally as well as metaphorically) in time for this week’s US Open – “obviously going to Oakmont, what you need to do more than anything else there is hit fairways,” he said, “I’m going to have to do a lot of work and try to at least have a better idea of where my game is going” – but such is the essential capriciousness of this sport that by the time of the Open Championship at Portrush next month he may have found his mojo again.
I will not be betting heavily against that. Whatever happens during the remainder of this year, though, Rory has already had a season he will never forget. In a good way.
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
