Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I loved how CBS handled the broadcast of Rory’s winning moment. 

In today’s SI:AM: 

👏 Rory wins at last

🏆 The history of the Grand Slam

😞 Bryson’s dud

What a round

Plenty of sports fans are not golf fans. That’s fine. Golf is an exclusive sport with a glacial pace of play. It’s hard to fault anyone who doesn’t feel compelled to follow it. But if you skipped the final round of the Masters on Sunday, you missed one of the most exciting sporting events in years. 

The final result was remarkable enough even without considering the journey it took to get there. Rory McIlroy, perhaps the most popular player in the game, finally won his first Masters to complete the career Grand Slam. It snapped an agonizing 11-year streak without a victory at a major and squashed the narrative that after seven top-10 finishes at Augusta, Rory simply didn’t have what it took to win the green jacket. 

That backstory alone would have made for a great moment on Sunday, even if McIlroy had cruised to a six-shot victory. But that isn’t what happened, of course. The combination of the narrative circumstances of McIlroy’s win and the dramatic rollercoaster of his final round made Sunday an instantly iconic sports moment. 

The tension ratcheted up on the very first hole, when McIlroy opened his round with a three-putt double-bogey to slip into a tie with his playing partner Bryson DeChambeau at 10-under par. It conjured flashbacks of the 2011 Masters, when McIlroy held a four-shot lead after the third round but shot a disastrous 80 on Sunday and finished 10 shots behind the winner, Charl Schwartzel. The lap bar had been secured on the rollercoaster. 

A DeChambeau birdie on No. 2 briefly gave him the lead before he coughed it up with back-to-back bogies. McIlroy looked well on his way to a fairly routine victory after a birdie on No. 10 brought him to 14-under and stretched his lead to five shots. Then he started sliding. A bogey on the 11th, a double-bogey on No. 13 and another bogey on No. 14 dropped him back to 10-under. Meanwhile, several others made a charge. Justin Rose, Patrick Reed, Scottie Scheffler, Ludvig Åberg and DeChambeau were all within spitting distance. 

The pressure was growing, but McIlroy didn’t fold—at least not immediately. He hit an outrageous second shot over the water on the par-5 15th that landed six feet from the cup, but then he missed a very makeable eagle putt. His approach on the par-4 17th was equally impressive, landing just two feet from the hole and giving us the memorable image of McIlroy chasing his shot, imploring it to “go, go, go!”

McIlroy’s birdie there made the stakes on the 72nd hole terrifyingly clear. All he needed to do to win the tournament was make par. 

This is where the rollercoaster really started to accelerate—a perfect tee shot. An approach shot into a sand trap. A bunker shot to within five feet. Another shot putt missed. A tap-in for bogey. So many ups and downs on the 18th hole of a round that had already featured so many emotional swings. McIlroy looked ashen. His arm had suddenly been yanked out of the green jacket’s sleeve, and now he had to regroup and try to win a sudden-death playoff against Rose. 

I’ll admit I thought McIlroy was toast after that. How could he possibly put that disappointment out of his mind and go play the same hole again with even higher stakes? He did, though. He hit that same perfect tee shot, then stuck his approach four feet from the flag and knocked down the putt for a birdie. Rose made par. The green jacket was Rory’s. 

It was the thrilling conclusion to a story that had played out over the course of four days—or really 14 years. McIlroy had entered this tournament saddled with such massive expectations. After so many close calls, the pressure to finally complete the career Grand Slam compounded. And his first round started so promisingly, moving to four under par on the 13th hole before double-bogies on the 15th and 17th led to a final score of even-par 72, seven shots back of Rose’s lead. Most people—including several who write for this very website—thought the first-round collapse meant McIlroy’s quest for his first Masters would stretch into 2026. 

But his comeback over the next three days, against the backdrop of his years of disappointment at Augusta, was nothing short of remarkable. To have it end the way it did—the choke on 18, the rebound on the playoff hole—elevated it into the pantheon of the greatest moments not just in golf but in any sport. 

The closest parallel is probably the 2016 NBA Finals, when LeBron James, who’d returned to Cleveland with the express purpose of winning the first championship in Cavaliers history, led his team back from a 3–1 series deficit to beat the Golden State Warriors. LeBron, like Rory, was already an accomplished athlete with two championships to his name. But the inability to win one with his hometown team—the team that drafted him—gnawed at him in the same way that Rory desperately sought a victory at Augusta. James, like McIlroy, had plenty of close calls in previous years, and needed a dramatic comeback to turn his dream into a reality. And James and McIlroy both had one iconic moment that sealed their respective victories. For LeBron, it was the clutch block on Andre Iguodala in the closing minutes of Game 7. For Rory, it was the pinpoint accuracy of his approach on the playoff hole. If you’re a basketball fan who skipped the final round of the Masters to watch the Warriors blow a late lead at home on Sunday, that’s what you missed. You don’t have to be a golf fan to appreciate how exciting McIlroy’s long-awaited victory was. 

The best of Sports Illustrated

• Michael Rosenberg has more on Rory McIlroy’s win, which came after many observers—including Rosenberg—had written him off. 

• Fans and media members may have doubted McIlroy’s ability to win at Augusta, but his friends in the game never wavered, Bob Harig writes. 

• Harig also explained the history of the concept of the career grand slam, the achievement McIlroy had spent so long chasing. 

• For Bryson DeChambeau, Sunday’s final round ended with a thud thanks to some poor iron play. Harig broke down what went wrong for the guy who started the day in second place. 

• Matt Verderame named the biggest draft bust in the history of each NFL franchise. 

• Here’s how much prize money each player at the Masters earned. 

• The NBA postseason field is set after the regular season ended Sunday. The play-in tournament will begin on Tuesday. 

• Bad news for the Cubs, who lost starting pitcher Justin Steele for the season with an elbow injury. 

The top five…

… moments from Sunday at Augusta: 

5. Sunjae Im’s close approach on No. 13 to set up an eagle. 

4. Patrick Reed’s hole-out from the fairway on No. 17. 

3. Rory McIlroy’s vicious swing to lift the ball over a tree on No. 7. 

2. Justin Rose’s long birdie putt on the 18th to tie McIlroy.

1. The CBS broadcast of McIlroy’s winning moment. Jim Nantz called the final putt and then the broadcast team stayed silent for nearly seven minutes and just let the pictures tell the story. 


This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | The Masters’ Final Round Was as Good as Sports Get .

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