‘Rory, Rory, Rory’: On Sunday at the Masters a hero rises in the dusk

AUGUSTA – “Rory, Rory, Rory.”

It’s past 6pm at the 18th hole at the Masters on April 13 and the scoreboard is being updated. A bellow emerges. It shows Rory McIlroy at 12 under. He’s just birdied the 17th hole and has a one-shot lead over Justin Rose. A ripple of expectation stirs the crowd.

The 18th green is ringed by thousands of people and many of us can’t even see the green but no one will leave. Emotion and history have tied us to this place. McIlroy is coming up the fairway to end his fourth round and victory requires only a par.

Simple. Right?

The crowd is 10 rows deep or more and I’m locked in it. I can glimpse the top of the flag but that’s about it. It doesn’t matter because sometimes sport just has to be felt and heard. A man’s triumph over himself is a powerful thing to witness.

“Rory. Rory. Rory.”

All day people chant. They start just before 2.30pm when he arrives at the first tee with a “knot in his stomach”. This man is a Northern Irishman, he’s playing with and against an American, Bryson DeChambeau, but you can feel people pull for him. Sport is not logical, sometimes just visceral.

These fans know golf, they know his 11-year wait for a Major, they know his wait to join the exclusive Grand Slam gang (Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods) who have won all four Majors. All of us understand chances: once you are younger and there are so many and then they pass and so few remain.  

Later McIlroy will fall to his knees. “All relief,” he will say. Later, he will weep and not just once. Later he will address his daughter Poppy during the Green Jacket ceremony and talk about persistence.

“Try and try and try again,” he says.

It’s this trying by a masterful athlete which keeps this horde of people rustling around the green. Stepping on each other’s feet, grinning, high-fiving. There are no phones for updates, no giant TV screens to watch ball flight. So a few of us are dependent on the very tall man who gives us commentary.

“Rory’s addressed the ball. He’s hit it.

“It’s gone into the side bunker.”

“Holy s***.”

McIlroy exits the bunker. But where’s the ball gone?

“Just five-six feet away from the pin,” says another fellow perched on a friend’s shoulder. He is politely asked to descend.

It’s a par putt to win the Masters. McIlroy misses. The crowd makes a sound as if it’s been hit collectively in the solar plexus.

Play-off.

Tension journeys across 7,500 yards and over five hours. McIlroy’s nerves must feel like rubber bands stretched too far. Occasionally they break. All day he has played erratically and brilliantly and absurdly and wonderfully. He double-bogeys the first hole, loses his lead by the second, leads by three shots after the fourth hole, hits through the trees, laughs at his own effrontery, hits an 82-yard wedge shot into the water.  

Still the patrons won’t stop.

“Rory, Rory, Rory.”

No one knows when the play-off will begin but we’re glued together – by anticipation; by the sense that this moment is Phelpsian and Federesque; by a man of whom Rose will say “plays with so much style and charisma and flair”.

Strangers talk and wait. Jokes flitter through the crowd.

“He should go into hibernation if he loses,” says a man.

“Anyone wants to guess his heart rate?”

Laughter.

The ground staff come onto the green to rake the bunkers and it raises a cheer. Then the crowd stills, the play-off has begun, news is relayed as if by bush telegraph. McIlroy is in the fairway. He’s hitting. Necks crane to sight the ball. It lands. A voice carries wonder.

“Oh my god.”

The ball has gone past the flag and spun back to a few feet.

In 2011, when McIlroy led the Masters in the final round and fell apart, his partner was Angel Cabrera, the 2009 champion. This time Cabrera leaves a note for him in his locker wishing him well. Old golfers say they want McIlroy to win. So do unbiased writers. Fans. Buggy drivers. It’s beautiful but it’s stressful. 

“It’s such a battle in your head of trying to stay in the present moment,” explains McIlroy, “and hit this next shot good and hit the next shot good.

“My battle today was with myself. It wasn’t with anyone else.”

Rose and him arrive on the green for the first play-off hole. People lean, peer, edge forward. Someone smilingly shouts “keep your head still up front”. It’s past 7pm and a hush meets the dusk.

Rose pars the hole. How much does Rory have left for his birdie putt to win?

“Exact same putt he had at the US Open” says a voice. The putt from 2024, he means, when McIlroy missed and lost.

Why are we here? No athletic feat saves lives or heals children and yet it’s so achingly full of human possibility and resurrections, and expressions of talent while wrestling with fear that it’s moving. Winning, in its own way, is an act of bravery.

McIlroy’s putt goes in. Pandemonium. The hero has met his dream. He collapses, exhausted.

The crowd is a study in joy unbound. This is a story they will retell forever. But for now it’s over and this emotional glue which binds us comes unstuck. As I wander across the first fairway and towards the press building, McIlroy is moving through the crowd and towards the clubhouse. I can’t see him but from a distance as evening falls the chorus rises.

“Rory, Rory, Rory.”