AUGUSTA, Ga. — Dressed in an unwashed and unkempt green jacket, Rory McIlroy walked into the news conference room at Augusta National on Tuesday, the Masters champion for a year now, without the burden of pressure and expectations that have become all too familiar.
“I feel very relaxed,” McIlroy said. “It doesn’t make me more motivated to go out and play well and try to win the tournament, but yeah, I’m more relaxed about everything.”
With the coveted Masters victory now secured and a historic grand slam part of his legacy, a more relaxed McIlroy emerged, believing he could have more success going forward, especially at Augusta National.
“I know I can do it now,” McIlroy said. “So that should make it easier for me to go out and play the golf I want to play.”
In the immediate future, that looks like defending his Masters victory, which McIlroy said Tuesday could include being more aggressive this year. But when it comes to the long-term view of his entire career, McIlroy hopes that here, in a place where he will fear the long wait until Thursday, will be where he has the best chance to add to his greatness.
“I think when you’ve been through the experiences that I’ve had here, good and bad, I think that can stand up to you,” McIlroy said. “I feel like I’m still young, but I have a lot of experience. This is my 18th start. I feel like I got 10 more good shots this time. It’s not that I’m not learning from other majors, but I think everything here is a little more predictable. I just think the more experience you have on this golf course, the better.”
Unlike other years where he arrived at the venue this week of the tournament, McIlroy has been on the field since Saturday. She took the final round of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur that day and took out trophies in the Drive, Chip and Putt tournament on Sunday before playing the course with her father, Gerry.
The five-time winner played nine holes on Monday and indulged in the grand galleries, which greeted him with cheers and applause as if it were the day of the tournament. As McIlroy said, the pitches and subs from sponsors have also changed.
“Now instead of ‘come on, Rory, you know you can do this,’ it’s ‘going back!'” McIlroy said. “There’s a real sense of humor in it instead of, ‘geez, Rory, we’ve been waiting a while. When are you going to do this?’ It’s so nice to walk around the neighborhood or be on the golf course and not have this hanging over me, like it feels like a huge weight off my shoulders.”
Relieved of that weight, McIlroy will look to post his best finish so far this season, which wasn’t much more successful than last year’s debut. Ahead of the first major in 2025, McIlroy won both the Players Championship and the Pebble Beach Pro-Am. This year, his best finish is a tie for second at the Genesis Invitational.
McIlroy admitted that his mind was not only on returning to Augusta but on all the festivities that come with returning as the defending champion. Chief among them is the Champions Dinner on Tuesday night. Even the fact that he couldn’t go inside that room because of that special meal for a long time is something that McIlroy is allowed to touch.
On Tuesday, he told the story of coming to the club last year to have dinner with Justin Rose that Tuesday night and stumbling upon a difficult moment as that dinner was going on.
“It was weird, I was pulling up Magnolia Lane, and you get to the circle, and I’m like, well, do I go and park in the parking lot? Because I’m not going to park in the championship parking lot,” McIlroy said. “Then at that time, the champs were having their cocktails on the balcony. I’m like I don’t want to say goodbye, I’m going out, they’re going to see me and it’s going to be weird. Yeah, thankfully that was the last time I needed to do that.”
Once McIlroy is done with the Champions Dinner this year, the food and speech he thought about “a lot,” he will finally be able to fully focus on the tournament. It may not be playing the same way from 2014 to last year, but McIlroy sees that as an achievement, not a flaw.
“You think that every time you achieve something or win that you’re going to be happy, but the goalposts keep moving, and they just push it a little further out of reach,” McIlroy said. “I think what I’ve seen is, if you can find joy in the journey, that’s a big thing because I honestly felt like the career grand slam was where I was going, and I got there, and I realized it wasn’t the place … there’s still a lot I want to do.”
