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)