Augusta, Ga. – Wearing a green jacket, which has neither been dry-cleaned nor tailored, Rory McIlroy Stepped into the news conference room at Augusta National on Tuesday, a Masters champion by a full year, without the burden of pressure and expectations that had become all too familiar.
“I feel a lot more relaxed,” McIlroy said. “It doesn’t give me any more motivation to go out there and play well and try to win tournaments, but yeah, it’s just more relaxing about it all.”
with The Masters win he sought has now been achieved and the historic Grand Slam is part of his legacyA more comfortable McIlroy emerged who believes he can have more success going forward, especially at Augusta National.
“I know I can do it now,” McIlroy said. “So it will make it a little easier for me to go out and play the golf that I want to play.”
In the immediate future, it looks like he’s defending his Masters victory, which McIlroy said Tuesday may include being more aggressive off the tee this year. But when it comes to the long view on the rest of his career, McIlroy is optimistic that here, at the venue where he came away dreading Thursday’s long wait, it will be the best chance he has to add to his major total.
“I think when you have the experiences that I’ve had here, good and bad, I think they can stand up for you,” McIlroy said. “I think I’m still young, but I’m very experienced. This is my 18th start. I feel like I’ve got 10 more good shots in this. Not that I haven’t been in other majors, but I think everything is a little more predictable here. I think the more experience you have around this golf course, the better.”
Unlike other years where he has arrived on the property well into tournament week, McIlroy has been on the field since Saturday. She competed in the final round of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur that day and handed out trophies in the drive, chip and putt competition before playing the course with her father, Gerry, on Sunday.
The five-time major winner played nine holes on Monday and enjoyed the biggest of galleries, which showered him with cheers and applause as if it were a tournament day. As McElroy points out, patrons’ chants and quips have evolved, too.
“Now instead of ‘Come on, Rory, you know you can do it,’ it’s ‘Back to back!’ Is,” McIlroy said. “Instead it has a real positive meaning of, ‘Oh my God, Rory, we’ve been waiting for a while. When are you going to get it done?’ It feels great to walk around the property or go to the golf course and not have that hanging over me, like it’s a big weight off my shoulders.”
Relieved of that burden, McIlroy will look to produce his best performance so far in a season that has been less successful than last year’s early days. In the lead-up to the year’s first major in 2025, McIlroy won both the Players Championship and the Pebble Beach Pro-Am. This year, his best performance is a second-place finish at the Genesis Invitational.
McIlroy admitted his mind is not just on Augusta but on all the festivities that come with returning as the defending champion. Chief among them is the Champions Dinner on Tuesday night. Even the fact that he couldn’t get inside that room for that particular meal for so long allowed McIlroy to have an effect on him.
On Tuesday he told the story of coming to dinner with him at the club last year justin rose That Tuesday night, while dinner was going on, a strange moment occurred.
“It was weird, I was pulling down Magnolia Lane, and you get to the circle, and I thought, OK, do I go and park in the parking lot? Because I’m not going to park in the Champions parking lot,” McIlroy said. “Then at that specific moment, the champions were having their cocktails on the balcony. I’m like I don’t want to stop, get out, they’re going to see me and it’s going to be awkward. Yeah, thankfully that was the last time I needed to do that.”
Once McIlroy crosses Champions Dinner This year, with the meal and speech he’s been thinking about “a lot,” he’ll finally be able to put his full focus back on the tournament. It may no longer dominate him in the same way it did from 2014 to last year, but McIlroy sees that as a feature of this accomplishment, not a bug.
“You think every time you accomplish something or have success you’ll be happy, but then the goalposts move, and they just keep moving a little further and further out of reach,” McIlroy said. “I think what I’ve realized is that if you can really enjoy the journey, that’s a big deal because honestly I thought the career Grand Slam was my destination, and I got there, and then I realized that wasn’t the destination… there’s still a lot more that I want to do.”
