Rory McIlroy’s Career Grand Slam Was Hard-Earned — And a Very Long Time Coming
It wasn't easy... but maybe that was fitting, at the tournament that has beguiled McIlroy most.
Rory McIlroy didn’t necessarily need a win at The Masters to establish himself as one of the greatest male golfers in history. Going into this weekend at Augusta National, he already was a four-time major champion, only the fifth member of that club to win a title this century. Though much of his major-winning was frontloaded, with none since 2014, he remained one of the best in the world overall in the intervening seasons, winning at least one PGA Tour event in all but one of those years and capturing multiple FedEx Cup titles.
Still, the fabled green jacket was the one that got away from Rory early — his most infamous collapse came at the 2011 Masters, when he held a four-shot lead entering the final round but shot 80 to finish a distant 10 shots back — and continued to elude him as the years passed. McIlroy finished among the Top 10 repeatedly at Augusta, but could never close the deal.
That script seemed to continue on Sunday at the 2025 Masters. He went into the final round leading by 2 strokes, and pushed it to 4 at one point, but unraveled after hitting the ball into the water on 13, finding the sand on 18 and missing several important putts. The ghosts of the past were haunting Rory again — but against all of that, he managed to beat Justin Rose in a one-hole playoff to finally, finally seal his first career win at Augusta.
In winning The Masters at long last, McIlroy became just the sixth modern member of the career Grand Slam club, joining a quintet of legends: Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Ben Hogan, Gary Player and Gene Sarazen. And while none of them waited longer than 3 seasons between getting the third and fourth legs of the Slam tour, McIlroy had to wait 11 seasons between those milestones:
That the last remaining piece of the puzzle was Augusta made Rory’s wait even more confusing. Historically, he is one of the best recent players at The Masters, with Top 10s in seven of nine tournaments there from 2014-2022, including four Top 5s, and his +1.94 strokes gained per round ranks 10th among players with at least 20 rounds played since 2005. It made no sense that this was the tournament where he kept finding absurd ways to melt down and not win.
But after knocking on the door for more than a decade, McIlroy finally got that green jacket — and it was fitting that the longest wait for a career Grand Slam (and one of the longest mid-career major droughts for a five-time winner) had to wait just a little bit longer before becoming official.
Filed under: Golf