The 44-year-old handled another near miss at Augusta with class and his place in Europe’s Ryder Cup team looks assured
There was one very happy man in Augusta on Monday morning, and there were 52 all in a stew, turning over thoughts of what went right and what went wrong, that short putt on the 6th, that wayward chip on 12, that sliced drive on 15, or whatever it was that cost them their shot at winning the 2025 Masters. While Rory McIlroy can enjoy what was, everyone else in the field is wondering what might have been. Justin Rose will feel it most. Rose, the antagonist in Rory’s story, scored 65, 71, 75, 66 – the last of them, he said himself, “a bogey away from being the greatest round I’ve ever played”.
The second shots during the playoff summed it up. Rose’s was pretty near perfect in the circumstances, and landed 15 feet from the pin, McIlroy’s landed just beyond it, caught the slope, and rolled back down and around, past Rose’s ball, and finished up 5ft from the cup. Sometimes good just isn’t good enough. “Yeah, it hurts,” Rose said, “what are you going to do about it, though?” He was the first to hug McIlroy close in the moments after he had made the winning putt. “Listen,” he told him, “I was glad I was here on this green to witness you win the career grand slam.”
