I’ve tried to write this blog a couple of times. The first time was in 2024, when I hoped Washington would win the CFB Playoff and send the Pac-12 off in style. There was a world where I wrote this last week after Houston won the National Championship. But life doesn’t work that way. Storybook endings rarely happen; happy endings aren’t rare, but perfect endings are.
Peyton Manning comes to mind. Even though he hadn’t announced his retirement before Super Bowl 50, it felt like the perfect ending in the moment. The right ending for a career trying to fight actual footballing giants. Coming back for one last season to lift the Lombardi Trophy and ride off into the sunset with Papa John and an agent who loves family-safe corporate commercials. But then you have Tom Brady’s career. The career was wonderful, and the ending was rounded out without the game leaving Brady behind. But it wasn’t “the right way.”
The right way has to be the perfect set of circumstances. It has to be the right moment at the right time with the right person. And, in my mind, the 2025 Masters ended the right way.
Rory v. Rory
A freshman high school teacher would sit there and tell you that to craft a great narrative, you need one of four elements: man v. man, man v. nature, man v. self, and man v. society. I would argue there are other conflict structures like man v. God, man v. the unknown, and man v. food.1 But for years we’ve seen a completely new conflict: Rory versus Rory.
I saw a tweet – that was lambasted by golf fans – that it’s great for Rory, he cares that people only care about golf for 16 days a year. Otherwise, he’d be known as a generational choker. More than Emmanuel Sharp.2 More than Clayton Kershaw.3 He, unlike his (Northern) Irish heritage, would suggest, just couldn’t finish when it mattered. Sure, Rory had 3 majors and more wins than could be counted on one-gloved hand. But at the end, when the road to history finally welcomed him, he’d veer left like a Rory putt.
If anything, Rory McIlroy is the professional athlete I most relate to personally. Not only because he questions the amount of daily creatine intake suggested by experts.4 But because the person most associated with stopping Rory is Rory. There are guys like Justin Rose (who actually has perennially been stopped by Rory), the late 2010s Rockets, and Josh Allen5 who always have someone in their way. But Rory’s greatest sports foe is himself on a Sunday.
The reason I believe Rory is the most relatable athlete is because of his inability to get out of his own way. For my own experience, if there is one thing I completely love, it is mentally being able to swing myself into failure. This blog is my baby; I worked to build it up only to immediately abandon it once I felt like my writing wasn’t up to par. Even when it comes to my weightlifting journey, even when I’m hitting weights for reps that used to be my maxes, all I see is arms in the mirror that don’t make me think I’ve even lifted a weight. I love being the perennial obstacle to my own success.6
How does eleven years of failure change the way you see yourself? How does eleven years of wanting something so completely, and the reason you can’t achieve it is your own failure, destroy you? I cannot imagine the constant voice in Rory’s head every time he failed again. Even when he became the guy for the PGA in its (losing) battle to LIV, the final battle was unconquerable.
Rory McIlroy was destined to be the bigger What If of the sports world. Derrick Rose had at least injuries to counter any in-his-own-way accusations.7
It’s only fitting that a boy from Northern Ireland is steeped in this eternal battle against himself. A boy whose family worked incredibly hard to get him to the point where he could succeed in a historic feat, steeped in black and white photos. And it’s fitting that a boy from Northern Ireland was the guy who jokingly and non-jokingly was put on the pedestal of non-success for the final accomplishment.
But this is what great stories are made from.
Masterpiece 2025
There are so many facets from this past weekend that I could talk about. Coming into this weekend with Rory being a favorite, a usual. Or that going into the Final Round, Bryson DeChambeau8 was the favorite to win (by betting). There’s also that First Round where it looked like the classic Rory weekend, where everything was going to fall apart in the most unceremonious way at the most ceremonious course. I could sit here and say the perfect story was being crafted. But really, that had been the story for eleven years.
I won’t sit here and pretend that l’m a huge golf guy and can come and name every single mini storyline. I didn’t even know that the first playoff hole was 18. But even I know going into that final day that Rory was in prime territory to meltdown on a scale only comparable to Chernobyl.9 Being in the lead on that final day for Rory McIlroy is like being the AP pre-season No. 1; it’s ripe for failure.
Caesar once broke down because he, at 32, had not conquered the same amount of land as Alexander at that age. I’ve wondered for years if Rory had that same thought, because he was chasing giants of the game. CBS putting up the “For Career Grand Slam” graphic is absolutely diabolical because they knew what they were doing. It’s like every time I text my A&M friend, “Wow, they’re going to win here,” because it’s funny.
The promising start, the 2014 PGA Championship win, and the eleven years of trudging up a hill. Must one imagine Sisyphus would be happy if Sisyphus knew the gods were on sports television discussing his failures?
There’s no reason to discuss the first three rounds. As much as the first three days help to create the final day, for the sake of an ending, the Final Round has to be conquered. The only way forward is through. Because for all the great Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays Rory McIlroy has had over his now-historic career10, it was always Sunday that killed his spirit. What’s most important is that first hole on Sunday.
The Classic Rory McIlroy Experience went this way: one thing goes wrong and it begins to unravel. Similar to the Framber Valdez experience, the mental anguish of a mistake drives the rest of the performance. The first incident happens, and the next thing you know there has been a picturesque mental break that can only be visually described similar to a Street Fighter-style execution. If not the first hole, then the water shot on 13, as Justin Rose11 had the Masters round of his life, would have led to a full out game breakdown which may have seen a triple bogey. Or, even more, the miss on 18 with a ball lay that was perfect for either elation or despair.12
But, for the first time in what felt like forever, the usual narrative didn’t occur. There was recovery and there was belief. When I saw the tee shot on 18 I believed. Instead of a shanked shot or a ball deep in the rough, everything went right. I like to throw around the Mandate of Heaven designation a lot – I did it to UH after the Duke game – but in this situation it felt fitting. After that Justin Rose green shot, which felt near perfect, Rory hits within two feet of the hole. No breakdown. No meltdown. Just right where it needed to land. The Mandate of Heaven.
I fully believe this was Rory’s last chance to win The Masters. It was too set up for him such that a failing would mean a mental door block forever from The Masters and a career grand slam. It would always be his albatross. Lose here, and it was over. There was no “a return to greatness” if he failed again.
And with that, before the shot was even hit the perfect ending was assured. Nothing about the past eleven years has been easy. It wasn’t the Tiger three tries or the Gary Player one try. It was eleven years of trying to reach that mountaintop with his albatrossian boulder. Everything ended the only way it could: through, not over.
It was never about the storybook easy Round ending that Tiger got in 2019 to cap off the return. There was no way it could be without drama and failure; that was the Rory story. It was never about double bogeying on the first hole. Rory McIlroy’s Masters win was about beating himself in the battle he had lost over and over and over.
And it was perfect.
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- I know this is a bad joke, but I’ve seen a man force food items down his gullet that even 600 LB Life contestants would find impossible. ↩︎
- This genuinely hurt to write and I feel horribly for Emmanuel Sharp. ↩︎
- This did not hurt to write. ↩︎
- Shoutout More Plates More Dates. ↩︎
- And, really, the Bills franchise in general. It does feel at this point it’s just never going to happen for that poor city. ↩︎
- There was a point in mu life I would espouse the Bojack Horseman “Born Broken” speech. ↩︎
- Even if it was his body getting in his own way, I don’t count that as Derrick Rose getting in his own way. You can’t control an ACL like you can you mental toughness. ↩︎
- I’ve actually completely come around on Bryson, and I don’t think it’s some PR stunt. I also used to be an insufferable geek. And then I grew up and calmed down and figured out who I was a little more. I’d like to believe that’s what happened here also. ↩︎
- I’ve always believed it was more than 15,000 Roentgen at Chernobyl. Everything I’ve read just said that was the max of a high-capacity Geiger counter. ↩︎
- To be fair it was always going to be historic at this point, but the Career Grand Slam really pushed it over the edge. ↩︎
- There is also something very ironic about a British man working to stop a Northern Irishman from achieving his long-awaited dreams. ↩︎
- It lay at the perfect point of “it could go in” and “well it’s a hard shot.” ↩︎
