Rory McIlroy Fulfills Dreams With Masters Victory

Rory McIlroy isn’t very active on social media. He does know enough to have an account on X, though, where he posted a photo of himself draped in the green jacket Monday afternoon with the caption, “Dreams do come true.”

A well-read and well-informed kind of guy, his lack of activity shouldn’t be confused for passivity. It’s not out of the realm of possibility to believe he’s sitting around each night, in between knocking off a few chapters of a self-help tome and watching an animated film with his young daughter, lazily thumbing through his timeline like the rest of us.

Of course, he’s not like the rest of us – well, his golf game isn’t, at least. He’s now a five-time major champion and the sixth player ever to capture the career grand slam. If some others achieved such lofty accomplishments, they’d paint ‘em on their private jet, tattoo ‘em onto their forearm and, without fail, update their Twitter bio.

More on that idea later. Maybe it’s his humble upbringing, maybe his temperate personality. Prior to this weekend, instead of bragging about all he’d attained, he simply offered this:

I hit a little white ball around a field sometimes.

I’ve always enjoyed that line. In those 10 words, McIlroy breaks down the game to its simplest essence, as if explaining golf to someone who’d never heard of it would only take a couple of seconds.

The reality, of course, is that the game is wildly complex and the game at its most elite level can be downright mind-numbing. This is a pursuit where psychological acuity often outshines physical prowess and technical expertise on the leaderboard, which only helps scratch the surface of the mental gymnastics that Rory has endured, through close calls and big misses, heartbreakers and hopelessness.

It’s been said that his victory on Sunday evening at Augusta National unleashed the monkey off his back, but even that does a disservice to the deed. McIlroy removed three proverbial primates in one fell swoop, capturing the career grand slam, an elusive Masters title and his first major championship in more than a decade.

He carried plenty of things with him on these journeys, both the one which took 11 years and the one which took 19 holes. He was nervous, he later admitted, and why wouldn’t he be? By the time he was fully into the final round, the options were obvious: This was either going to be the greatest achievement of McIlroy’s career or the biggest failure. There was no in-between.

For as much as he carried for himself, he also carried the weight of all those who desperately wanted to witness history. For the past 30 years, we’ve watched Tiger Woods in awe, knowing that greatness was a mere inevitability. We watch Rory, though, with fingernails between our bicuspids and sphincters fully clenched.

He’s the game’s most human superstar, maybe one of the most human superstars in the entire sporting landscape.

When he’s playing well, it’s superfluous to check a leaderboard. A smirk will be splashed across his face, his chest puffed out, a bounce to his step that screams swagger. When it unravels – and, oh, does it unravel, as we saw time after time during Sunday’s final round – the smirk dissolves into pursed lips, his shoulders start slumping, the bounce slows to a trudge.

It’s not by design, of course. Noted mental guru Bob Rotella has reminded him to make sure the highs aren’t too high and the lows aren’t too low, but sometimes he can’t help himself. These fallibilities are part of the humanity, just like his inability to offer cliched word salad in a press conference or his penchant for reversing course on public topics.

We might not revere Rory the way we did Tiger, but we can relate to him. We can understand frustration and failure and dreams unfulfilled.

All of which is why the emotional roller coaster of that final round offered so many observers an impassioned attachment when they otherwise owned no personal investment in the proceedings.

Maybe our dreams will forever go unfulfilled, but dammit, it’d be nice to see somebody have theirs realized.

When he’d finally – finally, finally, finally – clinched the one career goal he’d always been missing, McIlroy involuntarily fell to his knees on the 18th green. He wept. Tears of relief, he’d later say, not joy. Again, relatable, as anyone watching felt that same sense of relief after all those years of miscarried attempts and all those bungling errors throughout the afternoon.

What a stupid game. What a stupid, convoluted, disheartening, beautiful, compelling, rewarding game.

In its simplest form, golf is just about hitting a little white ball around a field sometimes. This time, Rory McIlroy did that better than anyone else, and the complexities of it withered to nothing, dissolving into a gleaming green jacket which can never be taken away.

Also nonexistent is that old social media bio. Sure, he still hits a ball around a field, but those 10 simple words have been replaced by three others which paint an even clearer picture of whom he’s become:

Grand Slam winner.