Rory McIlroy Is Relaxed at the Masters, and Now We’ll See What Comes Next

The reigning Masters champion has enjoyed a year-long victory lap, Michael Rosenberg writes. Now it’s time to see how much farther his talent can take him.

Defending champion Rory McIlroy has been a portrait of contentment for several days at Augusta National. | Matty Aylward/Augusta National

AUGUSTA — Golf brings people together and pulls them apart. Lousy golfers can play alongside the best in the world (try that in tennis) but the working class can only dream of playing the most private clubs. The game’s duality is especially pronounced at Augusta National, which is the most welcoming host in golf but also its most exclusive. You can park for free, but if you want to step inside the champions’ locker room, you have to win the Masters.

Rory McIlroy can go in there now. He might never come out.

“For the past 17 years, I just could not wait for the tournament to start,” McIlroy said Tuesday, as the defending champion. “This year, I wouldn’t care if the tournament never started.”

He will care when it starts. McIlroy tees off at 10:35 a.m. ET Thursday, and that is when he’ll start to answer one of golf’s most intriguing questions:

What will Rory McIlroy win now that he has won everything?

“I know that I can do it now,” McIlroy said, one year after finally winning the Masters and completing the career Grand Slam. “That should make it a little easier for me to go out and play the golf I want to play.”

He is absolutely right: That should make it a little easier. Whether it actually will remains an open question. At his best, McIlroy has blown away fields, even at major championships. At his most vexing, his psyche has ripped trophies out of his hands.

If McIlroy can truly play more freely, even under pressure, then he can be every bit as great as Scottie Scheffler has been for the past few years. But even he won’t know that he can do that until he actually does.

McIlroy has admitted he enjoyed a victory lap or two after his Masters win. His performance in the next three majors, including the British Open in his native Northern Ireland, did not tell us much. This week will.

From the moment he sank his playoff-winning putt last year, McIlroy was the people’s champ. He is wealthy beyond the dreams of the merely rich, and he lives like it—his Champions dinner menu includes foie gras, wagyu filet mignon and expensive wines—but never mind that. McIlroy still has the soul of an only child with two hard-working parents in Holywood, Northern Ireland. Golf has taken him everywhere, but it also has brought him human connection.

Rory McIlroy won the Masters with his best friend Harry Diamond on the bag. | Kyle Terada-Imagn Images

When McIlroy asks for a club, his best friend hands it to him; Harry Diamond, a fine amateur player himself, has known McIlroy almost his entire life. When Rory aspires, he tells the world. When he has an opinion, he shares it. When he is devastated, he shows it.

Other than a few well-documented occasions when he blew off the media after major disappointments, McIlroy rarely protects himself from the public. He answers questions. He opens up. He can be self-deprecating, but not to a fault. His public personality is his personality. It would be overstating it to say that if you follow golf, you know him. But if you follow golf, you at least know what he is like.

“It’s been an amazing 12 months, bringing this thing around the world,” he said, referring to the green jacket that only the current champion is allowed to take off the property.

He talked about “the excitement on people’s faces when they see it.” But it’s not just the green jacket that excites people. It is the green jacket on Rory McIlroy.

He has already had one of the great careers in golf history. He can ride that wave for the rest of his life if he chooses. But he wants more.

How McIlroy won his first Masters could help him win more

Last year, McIlroy lost the Masters a half-dozen-or-so times before he won it. He made four double bogeys. His wedge shot on the 13th hole on Sunday ended up in a Rae’s Creek tributary; it was one of the worst final-round shots an eventual champion has ever hit. The fact that McIlroy won this way really, truly should help him at every major going forward, but especially each April.

Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Bernhard Langer and Fred Couples have all summoned better golf at Augusta National than their age or form would have predicted. They know how to play this course, and they know they know.

McIlroy knows how to play it, he knows he knows—and he also knows that he doesn’t have to be perfect to win. For a long time, he elevated the Masters so high that it was hard for even him to reach. Now he understands that he can win here any year because he is that good.

“It’s completely different,” he said of his feeling this week. “I feel so much more relaxed.”

Imagine what he can do if he stays that way.