Rory McIlroy won the Masters for a second time on Sunday at Augusta National, and Nick Faldo was waiting after the one-shot triumph with a note about joining the club of back-to-back winners.
It was a line that carried extra weight because McIlroy is now a six-time major champion, one shy of Arnold Palmer, and the first player to repeat as Masters champion since Tiger Woods. Faldo had six majors before the Masters on Sunday; McIlroy had five, and the Northern Irishman added another Green Jacket to the one he won in 2020.
The win capped a tournament in which McIlroy built a six-shot lead at Augusta National before holding on when it mattered most. He also did it in a way that says as much about his game as his scorecard: he finished tied for 52nd in driving accuracy among 54 players who made the cut. McIlroy has never been the neatest driver of the ball, and on Sunday he backed that up by three-putting the 4th hole from 9 feet. He also hit a nine-iron to the 12th hole, a reminder that even in control, he still plays with the kind of margin that keeps a final round alive.
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The Masters had long sat apart from the rest of McIlroy’s record. He had already completed the career grand slam before Sunday, with major titles at the 2011 U.S. Open, the 2012 U.S. PGA Championship and the 2020 Masters, but the stretch from 2014 through 2025 was defined by the wait for a fifth major and, above all, another Masters. That made this one matter in a different way. Faldo, by contrast, arrived with a public image built on restraint, even as his own history included the 1996 Masters, when he overturned Greg Norman’s six-shot lead, and the speech he delivered at Muirfield in 1992 after winning The Open.
McIlroy has always been the more explosive figure, and he seemed to acknowledge the grind behind the achievement afterward, saying that if you put the hours in and work on the right things, eventually it will come good for you. He also admitted, with the bluntness that has followed him for years, that he does not make it easy. He added that he used to make it easy back in his early 20s when he was winning these things by eight shots.
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The note from Faldo turned the scene into a passing of sorts between generations of Masters champions. For McIlroy, who had spent years chasing this title again, the larger judgment is simple: he is no longer just the player who completed the grand slam. He is now the player who came back and won the Masters again, and in doing so put himself one major away from Palmer and back into the center of the sport’s biggest conversation.
