Will Irish eyes be smiling at Augusta?
McIlroy and Lowry face historic opportunities at the Masters
Rory McIlroy hopes 17th try proves his lucky charm in career-slam quest (David Paul Morris/ANGC)
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Whenever Rory McIlroy turns his courtesy car onto Magnolia Lane, what he calls “noise and narrative” follow him everywhere for the duration of Masters week.
Is this McIlroy’s year? Does he have what it takes to win a green jacket?
“It’s just trying to block out that noise as much as possible; I need to treat this tournament like all the other tournaments that I play throughout the year,” McIlroy said ahead of his 17th career start at Augusta National.
“Look, I understand the narrative and the noise, and there’s a lot of anticipation and buildup coming into this tournament each and every year. But I just have to keep my head down and focus on my job.”
How does someone trying to join the most exclusive club in golf history block out that noise when they’re trying to win the one major championship piece left to become the seventh player to complete the career grand slam?
For McIlroy this week, the answer might come in the way of frivolous diversion – titillating television and page-turning legal fiction.
“I’ve gotten into ‘Bridgerton’ – I didn’t think I would,” he said. “I was very against watching it, but Erica convinced me. So we’re on a bit of a ‘Bridgerton’ kick this week, yeah.
“And for the first time in a long time I am reading a novel. I actually got some fiction into my life. It’s a John Grisham book: ‘The Reckoning.’ It’s got off to a pretty good start.”
It can be a daunting task to create normalcy when you’re a player the caliber of McIlroy. He’s reached a phase in life where even his 4-year-old daughter, Poppy, is capable of recognizing what her daddy does for a living.
“The day after the Players, she went into school and there was a couple of kids that had said some stuff to her, and she came home to me that day and said, ‘Daddy, are you famous?’” McIlroy said with a laugh. “I said, ‘It depends who you talk to.’”
McIlroy’s daughter Poppy, 4, is learning that her daddy is famous (Keiran Cleeves/ANGC)
Too often in the last decade, McIlroy has been famous for the wrong reason – not winning majors. What had come so easy to him in compiling four major wins by the time he was 25 has been far more difficult in the last 11 years as he’s had to deal with repeated heartbreaks on the major stages. Those heartbreaks have been especially acute in the last three years with particularly painful near-misses at St. Andrews in 2022, Los Angeles CC in 2023 and Pinehurst No. 2 in 2024 – all three that felt like opportunities that got away from him. Yet McIlroy hasn’t let those moments keep him down.
“Over the course of my career I think I’ve showed quite a lot of resilience from setbacks, and I feel like I’ve done the same again, especially post-June last year and the golf that I’ve played since then, and it’s something that I’m really proud of,” he said.
“Look, you have setbacks and you have disappointments, but as long as you can learn from them and move forward and try to put those learnings into practise I feel like is very, very important. … When you have a long career like I have had, luckily, you sort of just learn to roll with the punches, the good times, the bad times, 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.”
So far in 2025, times have been good for McIlroy. He won a signature event on a trophy course at Pebble Beach and claimed a second Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass. He added a start at Houston two weeks ago on a course he’d never played before and improved his score every day to claim a T5.
He’s made two advance scouting trips to Augusta National before and after the Houston event to work on the shots he’ll need to finally get over the line in the Masters. He’s spent time working the last two weeks with coach Michael Bannon and feels ready to put himself out there again.
Ernie Els once said that “Augusta doesn’t owe anybody anything,” and it demonstrated that — sometimes cruelly — in his 23 unrequited efforts at the Masters. Other golf greats seemingly destined to win green jackets were forever turned away at the door to the Champions’ Dinner — Tom Weiskopf, Greg Norman, Tom Kite, Davis Love III and David Duval, to name just a few.
Rory McIlroy finds himself on the ridge between falling into that frustrated fraternity or climbing into the pantheon of golfers who conquered all the slopes to reach the career grand slam — Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tiger Woods.
Despite all of his skills that seem perfectly blended to suit Augusta National, McIlroy has never quite put it all together at Augusta. He’s shown flashes of brilliance like the opening 65 as a 21-year-old in 2011 when he nearly blitzed to a green jacket before it ever became an issue until a Sunday meltdown delivered his first Augusta scar. Or the closing 64 in 2022 that vaulted his to a career-best runner-up when he climbed from too deep a hole.
Yet he keeps putting himself out there and displaying what he calls his “willingness to get his heart broken.”
“It happens in all walks of life. At a certain point in someone’s life, someone doesn’t want to fall in love because they don’t want to get their heart broken,” he said. “People, I think, instinctually as human beings we hold back sometimes because of the fear of getting hurt, whether that’s a conscious decision or subconscious decision, and I think I was doing that on the golf course a little bit for a few years.
“But I think once you go through that, once you go through those heartbreaks, as I call them, or disappointments, you get to a place where you remember how it feels and you wake up the next day and you’re like, yeah, life goes on, it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be.
“Going through those times, especially in recent memory, where the last few years I’ve had chances to win some of the biggest golf tournaments in the world and it hasn’t quite happened. But life moves on. You dust yourself off and you go again. I think that’s why I’ve become a little more comfortable in laying everything out there and being somewhat vulnerable at times.”
Shane Lowry is making his 10th start in the Masters (David Paul Morris/ANGC)
While the world obsesses about whether or not McIlroy’s sterling form can finally allow him to complete his career slam this week, another Irishman in the best pre-April form of his career might very well be ready to snag the green jacket himself.
Shane Lowry slipped back one spot from his career-best No. 12 OWGR as his arrives for his 10th appearance at Augusta National. And the newly turned 38-year-old will carry a belief to the first tee on Thursday afternoon that he can win the Masters.
“I spent plenty of Masters tournaments coming in here not in form, not playing well, and this is the year where I feel like I’m playing okay, and there’s no point shying away from that,” said Lowry, whose best finish in 2025 was runner-up to McIlroy in a head-to-head final pairing at Pebble Beach. “I need to go out there and just sort of take the bull by the horns and be myself and see where it leaves me on Sunday.
“I’m in a good place. My game, mentally, physically, my game, everything about it I’m feeling good. I’m excited for the week. I think my biggest thing this week is I need to lower my expectations a little bit and go out and play my game and see where it leaves me at the end of the week. Yes, I’ve been doing very well over the last while and I put myself in contention, but it doesn’t give me any given right to go and do it this week. So I think it’s just back to basics and just go after it Thursday morning and see what happens.”
After missing the cut in three of his first four Masters starts from 2015-19, Lowry’s comfort and performance at Augusta National has been consistently strong in his five appearances since he won the Open Championship – T20, T21, T4, T9 and T36. His appreciation and reverence for the Masters has grown along with his maturing game at Augusta.
“I think every time you get the invite you feel kind of blessed to have the invite back here,” he said. “I love coming back here. From when my year starts in January you sort of, this is always in the back of your mind. You always have the second week in April in the back of your mind. I think even sitting at home last week, the build-up to it, I love it. I love thinking about it, I love the flight up here on Sunday and just coming here and getting out here Sunday afternoon.
“It’s just such a special place. It’s hard to describe what it’s like and what it means to golfers, but yeah, to come here and compete is one thing, to come here and try and to win one would be just something that it would be a dream come true.”
“It would be huge. It really would be. I think it would be would be one of the biggest things that has ever happened in sport in our country.” — Shane Lowry
Chasing dreams and keeping them from overwhelming a player is no easy task, as his mate McIlroy can attest. Lowry doesn’t seem the sweat the pressure that can accompany desire.
“I try not to think about it too much; I try to just be myself,” he said. “I come to tournaments like this and I probably get up for them, especially now like sort of later on in my career I get up for them easier than I do for a lot of other tournaments. I think it’s easier to get out and practice and get up early and go and do your work when you’ve got the Masters on the horizon and you want to go and compete here.
“Yeah, but all the majors, I just love them. I just love them, I love the competition, I love the carrot dangling there that what could be at the end of the week. I think that is, that’s the thing that keeps me going and keeps me getting up in the morning.”
Lowry came armed withed a focused gameplan to be ready. He made an advance trip to Augusta for two 18-hole rounds last week. He played nine more holes Sunday evening, the back nine on Tuesday morning and the front again with McIlroy on Wednesday before playing in the Par-3 Contest.
“You can have all the best plans in the world but you need to execute as well,” Lowry said. “Feel like I’ve been around here long enough to know what to expect and that’s one of the key things out here is kind of you kind of have to expect the unexpected at times. You hit some great shots out here that don’t get rewarded. You very rarely hit bad shots that get lucky, so it’s like your game needs to be very good this week to do very well.
“Look, I’ve never felt like I fully holed my fair share of putts around here. I feel if I can do that I can do something.”
Lowry and McIlroy act like Ireland won when Rory’s daughter Poppy made Par-3 putt (David Paul Morris/ANGC)
The longtime mates are poised to make history for Irish golf.
“It would be huge. It really would be,” said Lowry of what it would mean back home if one of the two of them were to reach the Butler Cabin ceremony this week and join the roster of Masters champions.
Of the seven most successful golfing nations on the major championship stages, Ireland ranks sixth with 11 titles among six golfers: McIlroy (4), Pádraig Harrington (3), Lowry, Graeme McDowell, Darren Clarke and Fred Daly. Spain is seventh with 10 majors among four golfers.
Among those seven nations with double-digit majors — the United States, Scotland, England, South Africa, Australia, Ireland and Spain — there are three glaring lapses on their respective ledgers. Neither Spain nor Scotland has had a player win the PGA Championship.
Ireland is the only one of them yet to claim a Masters green jacket.
“I think it would be would be one of the biggest things that has ever happened in sport in our country,” said Lowry. “So, I try not to think about stuff like that. I’m mentally strong enough now it will be gone by Thursday morning.”
McIlroy was more reluctant to place too much value to what a green jacket would mean for Ireland. He feels the burst of success Irish golfers enjoyed from Harrington’s first major win in 2007 through to Lowry’s Open at Portrush in 2019 stands on its own merits.
“We went through a really nice period there from 2007 through 2014,” McIlroy said regarding the bulk of victories in a seven-year flourish. “Obviously you had Pádraig winning the Opens and the PGA, had G-Mac winning at the U.S. Open at Pebble, Clarky at St. George's, I went on my run and Shane did what he did in 2019 at Portrush.
“We’ve had success in pretty recent memory. You’re sort of saying that one major may be worth a little bit more than the other majors. I don’t know. But it would be a pretty big deal, just like all the rest of them were.”
Considering their respective good form, it’s not a reach to believe the could finally by Ireland’s year to don the green at Augusta — one way or the other,
“Yeah, look, I think obviously if it’s not me I hope it’s (Rory),” said Lowry. “Trying not to think about it too much because obviously it would be a very special thing to happen. We’re both in good form, we’ve both prepared very well. I know that and we both will give it our best and that’s all we can do.”
McIlroy and Lowry both get late starts in back-to-back groupings in Thursday’s first round, with McIlroy going out at 1:12 p.m. with 2024 runner-up Ludvig Åberg and Akshay Bhatia. Lowry follows immediately behind at 1:23 p.m. with 2021 champion Hideki Matsuyama and reigning U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau.