Rory McIlroy played alongside Bale at the PGA Championship Pro-Am at Wentworth last year and has since laid out his own three priorities.
Speaking at the start of this year, McIlroy said: “Winning the Masters, winning an Olympic medal and another away Ryder Cup. They are my three goals for the rest of my career.” Surely in that order too, even if McIlroy did not confirm as much.
The Northern Irishman’s wish-list is unsurprising, with everything else already ticked off. McIlroy had secured the other three majors by the age of 25, and he has 28 PGA Tour wins to go with 18 on the DP World Tour. A successful Ryder Cup on American soil was achieved in 2012. The 11-year wait for a fifth major, though, goes on.
And so here we are again, at the final signpost of spring’s arrival and McIlroy has sat in a Masters press conference fielding questions on one obvious theme. This year, Rory?
Tiger Woods’ absence at Augusta has further strengthened the spotlight on McIlroy, as has the easing of Scottie Scheffler’s dominance and a general fatigue with talk of a PGA Tour-LIV Golf merger.
The first three months of the season could hardly have served as better preparation in McIlroy’s bid to become only the sixth man to complete the major set. The strokes-gained data points to him being the best player on the PGA Tour this year, as do the trophies.
McIlroy won at Pebble Beach in February and claimed a second Players title last month, beating JJ Spaun in a play-off despite being as “nervous as I can remember”.
The wedges have been tighter, the putting improved and victories have come even without his A-game.
A glance at his rivals also offers encouragement. Scheffler is yet to win this year, while Xander Schauffele, who won two majors in 2024, has had his season slowed by a rib injury. Collin Morikawa has one victory since 2021, Bryson DeChambeau still has Augusta questions to answer himself and Jon Rahm has struggled to find his best since moving to LIV. This year, Rory?
Perfect speed on the putt from Rory McIlroy's daughter Poppy 🙌 #themasters
— ESPN (@espn) April 9, 2025
(via @TheMasters) pic.twitter.com/riMN7h1nno
McIlroy has endured well over a decade of reflecting on his Masters rollercoaster. “I think you have to go through everything, right?” he said in 2023. “Not every experience is going to be a good experience. I think that would lead to a pretty boring life. You have to learn from those challenges and learn from some of that scar tissue that’s built up.”
Winners start fast
For all a Masters triumph has been billed as an inevitability for much of McIlroy’s career, the Green Jacket has only once been truly within touching distance in 16 attempts.
In 2011, McIlroy held a four-shot lead heading into Sunday, an advantage that was trimmed to one by the turn. He stood on the tenth tee at 11-under par; he walked off the 12th green at five-under. Hooks into trees, a four-putt, a back-nine 43, and ultimately a tie for 15th, ten shots off champion Charl Schwartzel.
McIlroy needed only two months to bounce back and win his first major at the US Open, but it was three years before he secured a first top-ten finish at Augusta.
Six more have followed in the decade since, but realistic chances of victory have been limited. Of his seven top-tens, only once has McIlroy been within four shots of the lead after two rounds.
In 2016 he was a shot behind leader and eventual winner Jordan Spieth at halfway but shot a 77 to fall out of contention. Two years later McIlroy played in the final group on Sunday with Patrick Reed, but started the day three back and finished it six off the pace.
A string of late charges into the places aside is otherwise as good as it has got, with McIlroy not holding even a share of the lead at the end of a single Masters round since 2011.
It is famously not a course to be biding your time at, either. Entering round three, 37 of the past 38 Masters champions have been in the top ten, with Schwartzel the only exception courtesy of McIlroy’s helping hand.
The one thing I’ve done a really good job of in the majors is I’ve been willing to have my heart broken because I’ve put myself out there
Put simply, the Northern Irishman must click into gear sooner. Since 2011, McIlroy has 13 rounds in the 60s at Augusta, ten of which have come over the weekends. He has begun the past six Masters with first-round scores of 73, 75, 76, 73, 72 and 71, missing the cut in 2021 and 2023.
McIlroy said last month he will “absolutely not” be still playing golf at 50, raising the prospect that his remaining opportunities for Masters glory could be approaching single-figure territory.
Close friend Shane Lowry has insisted the race against time is not urgent. “He’ll give himself 10 more chances to win majors, it’s just whether he does it or not,” he said.
Embrace the failures
Whether McIlroy wants Masters success too much is a matter for his sports psychologist Dr Bob Rotella to unpick, but the cause of any scar tissue is no secret.
McIlroy has proved himself capable of beating the world’s best on a regular basis away from the major arena, suggesting something else is at play when golf’s biggest prizes come around.
“Major golf is a mental exercise,” three-time Masters champion Nick Faldo told The Times. “[McIlroy’s] been thinking about Augusta since last July and he’s got good history and scary history. People do it different ways. Does he go the happy-go-lucky approach or put on the blinkers and not come up for air until the 72nd hole? ‘I’m free as a bird’ or ‘I’m on a mission’? Whatever you do, you’ve got to stay the same.”
For some observers, a fifth major edges further out of reach with every near miss. McIlroy argues the opposite.
“The one thing I’ve done a really good job of in the majors is I’ve been willing to have my heart be broken because I’ve put myself out there,” McIlroy said last summer.
“I’ve let myself be vulnerable and I’ve let myself get to that point basically of no return. I’ve experienced three of those Sundays in the past two or three years. But that’s what you need to do, you need to put yourself out there.”
Those have come away from Augusta. McIlroy ranks Sunday at St Andrews in 2022 as among the most painful rounds of his career, the surrendering of a two-shot lead on the back nine of the 150th Open leaving him in tears.
“It’s just a matter of keep knocking on the door and eventually one will open,” he insisted at the time.
“The more I keep putting myself in these positions, sooner or later it’s going to happen for me,” McIlroy said. “When I do finally win this next major, it’s going to be really, really sweet. I would go through 100 Sundays like this to get my hands on another major championship.”
McIlroy has in the past three years given himself more big chances to win majors than in any other period since his 2014 PGA Championship win. What could help McIlroy win the Masters is embracing the possibility that it might never happen.
Speaking after McIlroy’s win at the Players, Rotella said: “We’re probably going to spend as much time talking about the fact that whether you win the Masters or don’t, you’re going to have an unbelievable career. We’re going to find ways to take pressure off it so that he can win it.”
There would be no more popular sight than Scheffler helping McIlroy slip into a Green Jacket on Sunday night and the major floodgates could well then open.
There is a PGA Championship next month at Quail Hollow, where McIlroy has won four times, and then the emotional pull of an Open at Royal Portrush this summer.
Another week of Masters misery, though, particularly if it comes via Sunday heartbreak, and the questions will start again. Next year, Rory?
