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McIlroy’s Masters mission to complete the career Grand Slam will be a mental battle

McIlroy’s Masters mission to complete the career Grand Slam will be a mental battle
Nick Faldo at Augusta National Golf Club before the 2025 Masters. (Photo: Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
Craig Ray
By Craig Ray
9 Apr 2025
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Rory McIlroy comes into the 2025 Masters as the form player in the world in search of a career Grand Slam. But also with immense scar tissue.

Until he wins one, or reaches the point in his career when it isn’t possible to, Rory McIlroy will be the central narrative this time each year because “Masters champion” is the missing entry on his CV.

McIlroy, now 35, has won everything in the game barring a green jacket at Augusta. Four majors, Ryder Cups, two Players’ Championships (considered the unofficial fifth major) – the second only a few weeks ago – and the PGA’s Tour’s year-ending Fedex Cup.

He’s been world No 1 and an amateur champion. He campaigned against the breakaway LIV Golf tour, sat on the PGA players’ board, and funded and helped conceptualise Tomorrow’s Golf League, an indoor, semi-virtual competition that has just successfully completed its first season.

He’s made millions and represented Ireland at the Olympics, but has never been able to crack Augusta’s code to finally win the Masters, which would give him a career Grand Slam.

And while McIlroy is far from the end of his career, he probably only has about eight viable years left to tame Augusta and the select field of invitees.

This week provides another of those ever-dwindling opportunities to win the Masters.

McIlroy Rory McIlroy reacts after a messy finish at the 18th hole during the final round of the 124th US Open at Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina on 16 June 2024. (Photo: Jared C Tilton / Getty Images)



It might seem a long time, but it’s already 11 years since he won the last of his four majors, at the 2014 PGA Championship.

Time and opportunities come and go fast, especially in a sport with dozens of major winners and contenders in sporting combat for golf’s biggest prizes.

Winning is hard


Winning in golf is difficult for many reasons – especially because of its structure.

Unlike other sports that work on a knockout or league basis, every golf tournament demands that the winner not only overcome the challenges of the course and variable weather, but up to 120 other players. At the Masters the field is smaller and the possible winners number about 60.

The winner not only has to produce great play over four days, but also hope that another competitor doesn’t play that little bit better than you. It’s one of the few sports where a player cannot directly influence another’s performance.

This is the same for all golfers as it is for McIlroy, but the difference is the pressure the Northern Irishman is under – from fans, sponsors, media and himself.

McIlroy’s success as a player means that the expectation to win at Augusta is always high and with each passing year when he doesn’t, through his own play or a stellar performance of another competitor, it climbs.

Rory McIlroy plays a shot from a bunker during a practice round before the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia on 8 April 2025. (Photo: Richard Heathcote / Getty Images)



Rory McIlroy reacts on the second tee during the final round of the BMW Championship at Castle Pines Golf Club in Colorado on 25 August 2024. (Photo: Harry How / Getty Images)



And in 2025 McIlroy comes to the season’s first major as a favourite because his form has been so good this year. And because, aside from winning, he has performed well at Augusta in the past and clearly has the game to win on a course that suits his strengths such as long, accurate driving and sublime putting when he is “on”.

What McIlroy does behind closed doors though, especially on the psychological front to prepare for Augusta, is known to a select few.

“It’s just narratives. It’s noise. It’s just trying to block out that noise as much as possible,” McIlroy said at his Masters media conference on Tuesday.

“I need to treat this tournament like all the other tournaments that I play throughout the year. “Look, I understand the narrative and the noise, and there’s a lot of anticipation and build-up coming into this tournament each and every year, but I just have to keep my head down and focus on my job.”

Lessons from Ernie


But he might be well advised to listen to South African great Ernie Els, who was in the same position as McIlroy when it came to the Masters.

Experts such as the great Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player anointed Els as a future Masters winner when he emerged as a generational young talent in the early 1990s.

And Ernie came close. Runner-up to Vijay Singh in 2000 and second again to Phil Mickelson in 2004. His best years coincided with Tiger Woods’s best years. And Mickelson’s.

South Africa's Ernie Els never won the Masters and it took years to make peace with the fact that his chance had gone. (Photo: Andrew Redington / Getty Images)



With each passing year, as some players with inferior talent and records to Els’s won the Masters, he became more frustrated. It took more than 20 years of trying before Els raised the mental white flag at Augusta at a time when his best years were behind him.

Els rationalised his shortcomings at Augusta as something that the golfing gods decreed was not to be his.

He felt Augusta was cursed as far as he was concerned. He came to that realisation late in his career.

“When a thing stings you it keeps stinging you,” Els told the New York Post in 2019. “When it gives to you it keeps on giving. I’ve seen that with Gary Player. I’ve seen it with Jack [Nicklaus]. I’ve got a love-hate relationship with the place.

“It was always almost like a curse to me. It was not a romantic deal to me. It was a f-king nightmare for the most part.

“Then you start disliking the place when you shouldn’t. I try to keep my honour for the golf course and the people, because the members are great and the course is actually great. But it just doesn’t want to give me anything and then I was finally like, ‘You know what? That’s fine. Let’s move on’.”

That was said shortly before Els’s 50th birthday, two years after his last Masters appearance in 2017.

Relieve pressure


McIlroy might not want to take everything from Els’s remarks, but perhaps “moving on”, not allowing winning the Masters to define him, might be Rory’s best way of relieving pressure.

Of course, he might already have taken that approach and it’s just fans and media that keep pushing the narrative, as he said, but it’s unlikely.

McIlroy is a golfing great and he will be in the Hall of Fame at some stage in the future – with or without a green jacket. But as a competitor he will keep tilting at the Augusta windmill as long as he can because his talent and skill demand it.

“I think over the course of my career I’ve shown quite a lot of resilience from setbacks, and I feel like I’ve done the same again,” McIlroy said.

“Especially post-June last year (when he faltered on the last three holes to lose the US Open to Bryson DeChambeau) and the golf that I’ve played since then, and it’s something that I’m really proud of.

“You have setbacks, and you have disappointments, but learning from them, moving forward and putting those learnings into practice is very, very important. I feel like I’ve shown that quite a lot over the course of my career.

“When you have a long career like I have had, luckily, you sort of just learn to roll with the punches. It’s knowing that if you do the right work and you practice the right way, that those disappointments will turn into good times again pretty soon.”

McIlroy will be confident for sure, but he needs a decent start and a little luck because nagging doubts can quickly surface at a place that has haunted him for so long.

Nick Faldo at Augusta National Golf Club. (Photo: Michael Reaves/Getty Images)



“Physically, technically, he’s in great nick,” three-time Masters winner Nick Faldo, who was renowned for his mental toughness, told The Telegraph. “It’s just mental now, isn’t it? It’s the battle of dealing with the past.

“As we know, it’s been 11 years [since McIlroy’s last major win, the US PGA]. So, you know, it’s… how does he deal with that? We don’t know. That’s purely on him. What does he try to do? Can you turn back the clock? Do you start again fresh?

“The bottom line is he’s the best player in the world, so if he can keep saying that to himself… but he’s obviously got so much scar tissue.

“We have such a crazy, fragile game. It’s unbelievable how one little thing makes you so fragile. You’re only as good as your weakness in our game. But that’s what’s so fascinating about it. That’s why I love it.”

It’s why we all love the majors. DM

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