HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. (AP) — Scottie Scheffler was the star attraction of a parade just two days after the Masters. This one was all about a red plaid jacket from Harbour Town, not a green jacket from Augusta National.

The tradition of the RBC Heritage is for the defending champion to lead a half-mile parade that ends near the 18th green at Harbour Town, where he hits a ceremonial tee shot into the Calibogue Sound as a cannon is simultaneously fired.

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“I had some ear plugs. It’s always nice when a cannon is going off,” Scheffler said. “It was definitely a unique experience. I was glad just to be able to make contact with the ball and not embarrass myself out there.”

And at least he was well-rested for Tuesday’s opening ceremony.

Scheffler is in a different spot in so many ways compared with a year ago, when he was coming off a victory in the Masters. He flew home to Dallas for a brief celebration, then got back on a plane to coastal South Carolina for a $20 million signature event.

He won that, too.

Scheffler couldn’t always hit it where he was aiming this year in the Masters. He still tied for fourth and was proud of putting up a fight. It was tiring, yes, but without the adrenaline rush of winning and all that comes with it.

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Instead of a big party, a flight home to Dallas and then back to Hilton Head Island, Scheffler enjoyed a peaceful three-hour drive and some relaxation that this tournament offers.

Even with a $20 million purse, this can feel like one big exhale.

Masters champion Rory McIlroy is not playing, and that’s by design. He had mentioned earlier this year Harbour Town was not among his favorites — the course is more about position off the tee and small greens than blasting away — and he didn’t enter the tournament at last Friday’s deadline.

It’s the kind of course on which Scheffler thrives.

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Even while running on fumes after his Masters victory a year ago, he still had enough left in the tank to put on a tee-to-green clinic, building a lead with a 63 on Saturday and finishing off the win Monday morning because of rain.

“This golf course is much more about control and putting your ball in the right spots and staying out of the trouble,” Scheffler said. “The fairways here are much smaller than Augusta and a flatter golf course overall. A bit of a different test, but definitely still a good test.”

That depends on how well he’s playing, and Scheffler feels he’s close.

Everything is forward in his world, though there was a concession that he has been trying to catch up form having missed a month away from golf — the work in the gym, and practice on the course — from his decision to make ravioli on Christmas Day. He punctured his right hand with a wine glass and required minor surgery.

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Scheffler is still trying to put together a complete game — driving well one week when irons are suspect, good irons and pedestrian driving the next.

“I was playing a bit of catch-up,” he said. “I feel like I’m improving each week. Body’s starting to feel better. Swing’s starting to feel better. I feel like I’m working towards having another good season. I haven’t had my best start this year, but I’ve had some good finishes.”

He flirted with contention at Torrey Pines. He was in contention until the very end in the Houston Open. And even in the Masters, he was a birdie or two away — with some help from McIlroy — from having a chance.

Scheffler recalls being in the 18th fairway, two shots behind Justin Rose and McIlroy, thinking of nothing but holing out for eagle. Rose was in the group ahead of him and made a 20-foot birdie putt, leaving Scheffler three behind.

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He recalls telling caddie Ted Scott, “I guess I’m going to aim at the middle of the green now.” Scott concurred, Scheffler made par and he was on his way to Harbour Town.

His final act was twice helping McIlroy into the Masters green jacket — first in Butler Cabin, then during the trophy presentation on the 18th green.

“It was cool to be able to see Rory get the job done,” Scheffler said. “Definitely from the outside it looked a lot more like relief than anything. Rory has accomplished everything in the game of golf, and that was really the last thing for him to accomplish. The guy has won FedEx Cup, The Players, all four majors. Maybe the only other thing would be the Olympics is what he would want to win.

“It was really cool for me to be there in that moment,” he said. “He’s a good friend of mine. To be able to congratulate him and just see the joy on him and his family was really cool.”

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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

By Doug Ferguson

The Associated Press

AUGUSTA, Ga. — The Mount Rushmore of golf now has six faces carved into granite, and for that Rory McIlroy should feel as though he achieved the highest pinnacle in golf.

But there is so much more ahead for McIlroy.

He turns 36 next month and believes he is a better player than he was 10 years ago. There is little evidence to suggest otherwise.

In his 18 years on tour — half his life as a professional golfer — McIlroy has never won three times before the calendar turned to May. He has never felt so much freedom. He is playing with house money, and that has nothing to do with the $13.2 million he already has won this year in his six starts on the PGA Tour alone.

He is the Masters champion.

He now has a locker upstairs in the Augusta National clubhouse where he will find a size 38 green jacket waiting for him the rest of his life, a seat at the table Tuesday night at the Masters Club dinner. This was 11 years in the making. What a feeling.

The chest heaving as McIlroy dropped his head on the 18th green after winning was sheer relief. “The joy came pretty soon after that,” he said, and that much was evident by the look on his face when Scottie Scheffler helped him slip those arms into a green jacket.

“What are we all going to talk about next year?” McIlroy said, first in Butler Cabin and later to start his news conference. That’s the freedom he feels.

How about next month?

The career Grand Slam is in the books. It’s not too soon to consider a calendar version of the Grand Slam. The rest of the majors this year certainly line up in his favor.

The PGA Championship is next month at Quail Hollow, where McIlroy is a four-time winner.

He was among the players who went along with a fantasy question last summer. If the leading player in the FedEx Cup could choose where to hold the Tour Championship, where would it go? McIlroy picked Quail Hollow without hesitation.

The U.S. Open is at Oakmont, a big course for big hitters. That would suit him as well as anyone, though his last time there he shot 77 in an opening round held over two days because of rain and was gone by the weekend.

The British Open returns to Royal Portrush on his home soil of Northern Ireland, where McIlroy has a score to settle. The last time at Portrush, his own hopes and expectations were so high he hit his opening tee shot out-of-bounds, made an 8 and wound up missing the cut.

He returns with more freedom than pressure.

All that is a long way off, but it’s an example how the conversation about McIlroy has turned. It’s no longer what he was lacking but what else he can gain.

Scheffler, who was with him in Butler Cabin and during the trophy presentation, offered this observation Tuesday: “I don’t have the understanding of what it’s like to be asked about the career Grand Slam, but I have a small understanding of what it’s like to be asked, ‘Hey, you accomplished this, but you haven’t accomplished that.’ It can be very taxing on people sometimes.”

Brad Faxon, a close friend who works with McIlroy on his putting, said there was nothing stopping McIlroy now and that he could double his number of majors. “He can go on to win 10,” Faxon said.

Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus once said a young Tiger Woods had the fundamentals to win 10 green jackets, as many as both of them combined. Woods got halfway there.

McIlroy was still 18 holes away from winning his first major in the 2011 U.S. Open at Congressional when Padraig Harrington declared, “If you’re going to talk about someone challenging Jack’s record, there’s your man.”

Nicklaus has the gold standard in golf with 18 majors. McIlroy now has five, the same as Brooks Koepka, 10 fewer than Woods.

It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement. This Masters ranks among some of the great moments at Augusta National — Woods in 2019, 2001 and 1997, Nicklaus in 1986 and 1975, Arnold Palmer in 1960.

But this wasn’t easy for McIlroy, not on Sunday, not the previous 16 years. It had been 11 years since he won any major, and while winning the Masters was his dream, only twice in 16 previous tries did McIlroy go to the back nine with a serious chance of winning.

Far more haunted were players like Greg Norman and Tom Weiskopf, David Duval and Ken Venturi. That all had more scar tissue.

McIlroy said two years ago after his close call at the U.S. Open that he would go through “100 Sundays like this” to get another major. He would have gone through 1,000 Sundays to get a green jacket, especially considering all that was at stake.

McIlroy now is the sixth player with the career Grand Slam, joining Woods, Nicklaus, Gary Player, Ben Hogan and Gene Sarazen. Only four of them actually “won” the career slam because the modern version of it wasn’t even a thing until Arnold Palmer declared it one in 1960.

The only other player to complete the slam at the Masters was Sarazen in 1935 when it was held for the second time and wasn’t even called the Masters. He officially won the Augusta National Invitation Tournament. Green jackets weren’t awarded until 1949. The Masters Club dinner on Tuesday night didn’t start until 1952.

McIlroy really is the only player to get the last leg at the Masters, where memories are strongest as the only major held at the same course. That’s how special this was.

To consider the height of this achievement is to look not only at who he joined but who is missing from the Mount Rushmore of golf.

Sam Snead shares the PGA Tour record with 82 career wins. He’s not there because of the U.S. Open. Phil Mickelson has achieved more than McIlroy except for that missing leg of the Grand Slam (also the U.S. Open).

Tom Watson had 39 career PGA Tour wins and eight majors. Palmer is arguably the greatest influence in modern golf. Neither won the PGA Championship.

McIlroy began to wonder if he would also be one of those “almost” greats. The Masters frees him from that burden. Now it’s a matter of how much further he can go.

Originally Published: April 15, 2025 at 6:01 PM EDT

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Four miles west of Augusta National Golf Club, in the Forest Hills section of town, where colonial revivals mix with brick Tudors, dusk settled in over a garden party Wednesday. It was the night before the 2025 Masters Tournament, and Nick Faldo and Ben Crenshaw sat on a back porch for a soiree typical for this time of year around here. Small, exclusive, deep-pocketed. A fireside chat between the two Masters winners was tabbed as the highlight of the evening. Faldo and Crenshaw did their part, playing the hits and telling one story after another.

Then the topic of conversation turned to Rory McIlroy. Voices turned desperate.

Crenshaw sounded like a cleric, imploring everyone to keep the faith. Now 73, with a head of wispy white hair, the two-time Masters winner (1984, 1995) looks and sounds as trustworthy as anyone. So everyone nodded when Crenshaw said nobody in the world is playing better golf than McIlroy. This is the year, he said. This has to be the year. Crenshaw predicted McIlroy would win his first Masters this week.

Faldo agreed. The six-time major winner won thrice in Augusta — 1989, 1990, 1996 — and said McIlroy has always been a natural fit for the course. Faldo not only picked McIlroy this week but also said he’d be outright rooting for him. Then came a sigh. Faldo wondered aloud which version of McIlroy would show up at Augusta. Would it be the happy version? The analytical version? The disassociated version? It sounded like Faldo was describing a man in a house of mirrors. All the McIlroys we’ve come to know, all looking at one another.

The next morning brought Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Gary Player. Eleven Masters between ’em. The tournament’s honorary starters donned their green jackets and entered the media center after hitting the day’s opening tee shots.

The topic of conversation, again, turned to Rory McIlroy.

“I think Rory McIlroy will win the Masters this year, and I hope he does because it would give golf a great boost to have another winner of the Grand Slam,” Player said, punctuating every word. “He has the best swing in golf with. out. question. He’s the fittest golfer. He does a dead lift of 400 pounds!”

Watson followed. In his staid Midwestern timbre: “I just have a gut feeling … that Rory is the guy that’s going to win this week. That’s … the bottom line. That’s my gut feeling.”

Then Jack. “I think it’s about time that Rory won.”

This has for so long been McIlroy’s place in golf’s most exclusive space. He was the teenage prodigy who fulfilled all his boundless talent in one rushing wave of curly black hair and levels of success that suggested he didn’t know any better. His future then? It was a foregone conclusion. Nicklaus once said aloud that a 25-year-old McIlroy might win 15 or 20 majors. Graeme McDowell, a friend and fellow Ulsterman, countered that McIlroy would win “as many majors as he wants.”

Everyone always responded with the same quip back then. Good luck, kid. Tongue-in-cheek. The kid was so good, he didn’t need any luck.

But then that kid turned into a 35-year-old man. A man who became a father. A man who found that the sides go gray first. A man who never did win all those majors and who did, in fact, need a little luck.

All that — that’s what came turning around the corner late Sunday afternoon, striding through a tunnel of fans off Augusta’s 18th green, walking without a shadow despite a shallow sun; arms extended, eyes welling, chest pounding. Catharsis, thy name is Rory. The old lad won the 2025 Masters in the most patent way possible, by outwitting an army of demons and finally meeting his place in history. It took a playoff with Justin Rose. It took some all-time blunders and would-be disasters. It took every imaginable flashback to all imaginable disappointments. But it happened.

Falling to his knees after Sunday’s final putt, McIlroy dropped his head as low as it could go. He pressed his forehead upon the 18th green, pulled up a few inches and unleashed a yell that reached from 2025 in Augusta to 2011 in Augusta. And from Pinehurst to Los Angeles to St Andrews. And from his house in Florida to his home in Northern Ireland.

You want to talk about pressure?

Listen to that yell.

“There wasn’t much joy in that reaction,” McIlroy said Sunday evening, wrung out. “It was all relief.”

We’ve always wanted to understand the pressure felt by both Young Rory McIlroy and Old Rory McIlroy. Volumes upon volumes have been written on it. Documentaries have been recorded about it. Podcast empires have been built upon it.

But the truth has always been that no one has ever known. It’s one thing to put pressure on yourself. It’s one thing to feel the pressure of fans and media. It’s another thing entirely to extend one’s arms and carry the pressure handed to you by every Great One to come before you. That’s what McIlroy has long been tasked with and, really, how does one weigh history?

Earlier this week, after following a landmine-laden opening even-par 72 with a bounce-back 66, McIlroy met with reporters and was asked about those comments from Nicklaus, Player and Watson. You could damn-near see the glint leave McIlroy’s eyes. He rested his head upon his hand and sort of pulled his face along his palm. He deflected so hard the room had to duck. “They’re getting old,” he said with a let’s-move-on laugh.

Come Sunday, McIlroy was ready to talk.

You want to talk about pressure?

“You’ve had Jack, Gary, Tom, Tiger, you name it, all come through here, and all say that I’ll win the Masters one day,” McIlroy said, nodding, wanting every note of the point to come across. “That’s a hard load to carry. It really is.

“You know, these are idols of mine, and it’s … look, it’s very flattering that they all come up here and they believe in me and they believe in my abilities to be able to win this tournament and, you know, achieve the Grand Slam and all that.

“But it doesn’t help, you know?”

It’s somewhat amazing the man is upright after so many years of this. McIlroy was 25 when he won his fourth major — the 2014 PGA Championship at Valhalla. He was only a month older than Nicklaus was when he won his fourth. He was only nine months older than Woods was when he won his fourth.

It’s hard to remember now, but it was once assumed that McIlroy would not only win at clips similar to those two, but would also be one to overshadow yet another generation of professional players, just as they did. Around 2010 to 2011, as Woods walked knee-deep in the funk of public embarrassment, endless injuries and a broken swing, the door swung open to players desperate for space in major tournaments. A 41-year-old Phil Mickelson won the 2010 Masters. Then McDowell became the first European to win the U.S. Open since 1970. Louis Oosthuizen won the Open. Martin Kaymer won the PGA Championship. The 2011 Masters was claimed by Charl Schwartzel. All of a sudden, the sport had something resembling parity.

But then came McIlroy. The prodigy from little Holywood, County Down, Northern Ireland, was named to the 2010 European Ryder Cup team at 21. Then shook the pine straw in Augusta with rounds of 65-69-70 before showing his age with an infamous final-round 80 in the 2011 Masters. But then it happened: an eight-stroke U.S. Open win at Congressional. There was nowhere to run.

Ever since, McIlroy’s entire adult life — every moment personally and every swing professionally — has been combed, covered and catalogued.

Assumed to be the Next One, McIlroy instead starred in the longest second scene imaginable. From 2015 through 2024, his 21 top-10 finishes in majors were the most ever for a player in 10 years without winning. From 2020 to the beginning of this week, he owned the best weekend score to par in the major championships of any player. He somehow went 0-for-19.

Those greats McIlroy was supposed to stand next to, meanwhile, kept waiting. No one cared whether McIlroy filled whole rooms with FedEx Cup points, as long as his last major victory remained in the amber of 2014, nothing else mattered.

Without a Masters victory, McIlroy would forever be confined to that best-to-have-never space. A spot known all too well by Lee Trevino, Johnny Miller, Greg Norman, Ernie Els, Nick Price, Brooks Koepka and others.

Without a Masters victory, he’d live forever looking in from outside the Grand Slam. It would remain Nicklaus, Woods, Player, Ben Hogan and Gene Sarazen. One seat pushed out from the table, but still empty.

Every passing year only made it worse.

You want to talk about pressure?

Before the 2023 Masters, Woods all but guaranteed McIlroy would win at Augusta sooner or later.

“He will,” Woods said. “It’s just a matter of time. Rory has the talent. He has the game. He has all the tools to win here.”

Arriving at Augusta that same week, the question was unavoidable, so McIlroy answered it. “I feel like I am as good, if not better a player, as I was the last time I won a major championship,” he said. “So I’m feeling pretty good about it.”

Then he shot rounds of 72 and 77, missing the cut.

The pressure nearly overtook Rory McIlroy on Sunday. (Andrew Redington / Getty Images)

McIlroy’s talent has always been all his own. So, too, has been this load he’s carried.

For as uncomfortable as Sunday was at times, every moment now feels all too fitting. McIlroy began the day opposed by Bryson DeChambeau, a human Cybertruck who can hit the ball just as far and draw just as big of a crowd. McIlroy responded by turning an opening two-shot lead into a one-shot deficit in only 33 minutes. Two holes and 26 minutes later, McIlroy was somehow back in the lead by a stroke. Then up by four strokes. Then five.

For a moment, it looked like Augusta mightn’t summon the dark angels before day’s end.

Instead, perhaps the worst pitch shot of McIlroy’s career caromed along the front of No. 13, trundling down into the water. A double bogey, his fourth of the week.

You want to talk about pressure?

No one had ever, until this week, won a Masters with four double bogeys. How could this be happening? Augusta swirled in place, so fast, so slow, all at once. Moments flashed.

At 5:38 p.m., McIlroy and Rose inexplicably tied atop the leaderboard. At 5:51, Rose up one stroke. At 5:57, a three-way tie including Ludvig Åberg. At 6:10, maybe the greatest 7-iron of McIlroy’s life, leading to birdie on 15. At 6:14, a 20-foot birdie putt from Rose ramming into the 18th hole. At 6:53, a missed McIlroy par on 18 and a groan that, if things had gone another way, would’ve lasted forever.

But then, a pivot in history.

McIlroy birdied the first playoff hole. Rose did not.

An exhale strong enough to exhaust everything before it.

“The best day of my golfing life,” McIlroy later called Sunday. “I’m proud of never giving up. I’m proud of how I kept coming back and dusting myself off and not letting the disappointments really get to me.”

On the other side of that tunnel of fans, looking like an Irish Andy Dufresne, McIlroy eventually ran out of people to hug. He stopped in place, sort of seeing everything for the first time, like he realized where he was and what had just happened.

Letting out a heavy pant, McIlroy let everyone know, “All right, I gotta go get a green jacket,” and turned to head off to the clubhouse. There were a lot of people waiting for him.

(Top photo: Richard Heathcote / Getty Images)