The greatest battles Rory McIlroy has fought over the last 10 years have been with himself. This was never going to end any other way.
At times on Sunday, it seemed like the only thing standing between McIlroy and victory was the space between his ears. His fiercest opponent refused to go down easy, sending he and the golf world on an epic, unprecedented rollercoaster ride.
Here are the top notes and numbers to know from the final round of a historic 89th Masters Tournament.
1. McIlroy is just the sixth player in men’s golf history to complete the modern career Grand Slam, joining Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. His path to earning the final piece of that puzzle was dramatically different than his five predecessors, as he needed 11 starts at the Masters to do it since winning the third leg at the 2014 Open Championship. None of the other five men to complete the slam needed more than three tries in their missing event.
McIlroy went more than a decade between his fourth and fifth career major victories, the previous being the 2014 PGA Championship. Rory is just the fifth man to win sequential majors in his career more than 10 seasons apart, the previous being Woods here at Augusta National in 2019.
McIlroy is the first European player to reach five major wins since Nick Faldo at the 1992 Open and the first European player in men’s golf history to complete the slam.
2. Woods, the last man to complete the Grand Slam, carried a sense of inevitability in his brief chase. Tiger won the final leg of the slam in an eight-shot romp at St. Andrews one month after getting the third piece — a 15-shot laugher at Pebble Beach. The promise of years’ worth of major Sundays ahead adorned a historic rise into superstardom.
McIlroy’s fight to the finish was as heart-wrenching, thrilling and golf-schizophrenic as humanly possible, befitting a man who made 11 trips to Augusta with golf immortality looming over his every step.
Rory carded four double bogeys — two of them sevens — both a first for any Masters winner. McIlroy also wound up with 30 ‘3’s’ on his scorecard, three more than anyone has accumulated in Masters history. His last 11 holes this week included five birdies, three bogeys and a double.
McIlroy is the first player to make double bogey on the first hole of the final round at the Masters and still win the Tournament since Faldo in 1990. Interestingly enough, Faldo also beat a 40-something former U.S. Open champion in a playoff that day — Raymond Floyd. Rory tied the largest 18-hole deficit overcome by a Masters winner — seven strokes — done by (again) Faldo in 1990 and Woods in 2005.
3. There is almost no useful context in which Rory’s Masters victory can be placed when combining historic scope and wildly inconsistent nature.
He’s the first winner of any men’s major to make four or more doubles since Woods at the 2008 U.S. Open, who also won in a playoff. Craig Stadler made three double bogeys when he won his green jacket in 1982, but two of them were on Thursday. Rory made a pair Thursday and then two more Sunday for good measure.
McIlroy hit just two fairways on the first nine, the fewest for any player in the final round of a Masters victory in at least 30 years. Yet it seemed like almost every time McIlroy would hit his second shot from the pine straw, he was able to carve a window in the Georgia pines above to make magic happen. McIlroy hit only 35 fairways in regulation for the week — the last champion to hit fewer was Adam Scott in 2013.
4. Iron play was the separating factor again in determining the Masters champion. McIlroy led the field for the week in strokes gained approach, the eighth time in the last 11 years that the winner of the green jacket ranked sixth or better that week in that metric. Rose, McIlroy’s playoff opponent, ranked third.
In the end, Bryson DeChambeau’s short game magic couldn’t overcome his iron play deficiencies: the two-time U.S. Open winner ranked 50th of 53 players who made the cut in strokes gained approach. In the final round, DeChambeau ranked 44th in that statistic, losing more than a stroke and a half to the field in that category. Bryson hit 59.7 percent of his greens in regulation for the week — nobody has won the Masters hitting less than 60 percent since Mike Weir in 2003.
5. After making birdie at No. 2, DeChambeau’s first whiff of trouble came on the stretch of holes that have given him fits in his Masters career. From 2016 through 2022, Bryson was a combined 22-over-par on holes three, four and five at Augusta National, second-worst among all players in that span when you exclude past champions. DeChambeau made consecutive bogeys at three and four, never again getting back to double-digits under par.
After scuffling for most of his early Masters career, DeChambeau has now recorded consecutive top-six finishes. Only DeChambeau and Scottie Scheffler have pulled that off in each of the last two Masters Tournaments.
6. Rose is just the second player in history to lose two Masters playoffs, but the company he keeps is golf royalty: Hogan. This is the third time Rose has finished runner-up at Augusta National, having previously done so in 2015 and 2017. Among players to have never won a green jacket, only Tom Weiskopf has more second-place finishes at the Masters than Rose. Having shared the lead after 72 holes of regulation, Rose has led or co-led following 11 Masters rounds in his career. In the history of the tournament, only Nicklaus and Palmer have more.
Justin’s 10 birdies Sunday were one shy of the Masters single-round record, held by Anthony Kim (second round in 2009). His turnaround on the greens from Saturday to Sunday was immense — a difference of more than six shots in the strokes gained putting metric.
7. Rose bookended his week with sparkling scores of 65 and 66. He is just the third player in Masters history to shoot multiple rounds of 66 or lower and not win – the others being Jordan Spieth in 2018 and Johnny Miller, 50 years ago this week. With Rory also having shot a pair of 66s, this is the first Masters in history where more than one player recorded multiple scores of 66 or lower.
Sunday was the 12th time in Rose’s major championship career that he has shot 66 or better. Since the first Masters in 1934, only two European players have more such rounds — McIlroy (22) and Tommy Fleetwood (12). Had Rose (44 years, 8 months, 14 days old) won, he would have been the oldest European man to win one of the four professional majors since Old Tom Morris won the 1867 Open at age 46.
8. Patrick Reed finished alone in third place, buoyed by the lone eagle made by anyone this week at the 17th hole. It was just the fifth made on 17 in Masters history and the first in the final round since Takaaki Kono in 1969. Reed, who ranked second in the field in strokes gained tee-to-green for the week, recorded four rounds under par for the second time in his Masters career (2018, won). He was one of just two in the field to accomplish that, along with Sungjae Im.
Reed is the only player to have finished 12th or better in six of the last eight Masters played. Since 2018, Reed has more than 50 strokes gained with his short game and putting at the Masters, by far most of any player in that stretch.
9. McIlroy’s victory snaps a streak of seven consecutive men’s major championships won by players from the United States. It was the longest such run in the men’s game since the Americans rattled off 13 in a row from 1974 through 1977. McIlroy, 35, also halts a run of four consecutive Masters winners in their 20s, the most in tournament history.
While it was in serious doubt at many points Sunday, this marks the ninth consecutive Masters that the champion has come from the day’s final pairing. Now 67 of 89 Tournament winners — 75.3 percent — have been either first or second through 54 holes.
10. Attention shifts to next month’s PGA Championship at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, N.C. While Justin Thomas won the last PGA played there in 2017, McIlroy has won what’s now known as the Truist Championship four times on that course. That includes last year, when he closed with 65 to run away by five shots.
The last player to win the Masters and PGA Championship in the same season was Nicklaus in 1975. Like McIlroy, Nicklaus won that tension-filled Masters on April 13.
The opening round of the PGA Championship is in 32 days.
(Top photo: Michael Reeves / Getty Images)
