Golf · 2025 · Augusta, USA
McIlroy Completes the Career Grand Slam
Eleven years after his last major, Rory McIlroy survives his own final round and a play-off to win the Masters and complete golf's career Grand Slam.
Won play-off vs. Justin Rose
Result
11
Years since previous major
6th men's career Grand Slam
Distinction
Rory McIlroy had won the other three men's majors, the US Open, the Open Championship and the PGA Championship, by the age of 25. The Masters, the one he needed to complete the career Grand Slam, had spent over a decade refusing him, starting with the final-round collapse there in 2011 that everybody remembered.
His 2025 final round did not go smoothly either. A double bogey on the very first hole cost him the overnight lead, he surrendered a four-shot cushion across his closing six holes, and a bogey at the 72nd dropped him into a play-off at 11-under, where Justin Rose was waiting on the back of a closing 66, one of the great final rounds in the tournament's own history.
McIlroy won the sudden-death play-off at the first extra hole and went down on his knees in tears more or less where the 2011 collapse had happened. At 35 he became the sixth male golfer to win all four modern men's majors across a career, after Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.
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