Update: Sometimes Golf Does Love You Back!

By Jacob Weindling  |  April 14, 2025 | 4:34pm
Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images
Sports golf
Update: Sometimes Golf Does Love You Back!

Last June I wrote about Rory McIlroy’s dramatic U.S. Open loss to LIV Tour star Bryson DeChambeau that served as a metaphor for the present state of the world and golf as a whole, as I detailed some of my own Rory-style experience in how golf will never love you back. McIlroy completed three fourths of the vaunted career grand slam quickly to start his career, and after winning the third leg eleven years ago, he trained his eye on the Masters. Winning golf’s greatest tournament would place him on its Mount Olympus alongside Jack Nicklas, Tiger Woods, Gene Sarazen, Gary Player and Ben Hogan as the only players to ever win all four majors. The most tries it took any of them to complete the career grand slam was three, as their dominance defined their eras.

Rory is another story entirely, requiring eleven tries to join golf immortality. He is not the only golfer who came into the Masters one major short of a career grand slam, but he is the highest profile one. He fought whatever the good fight counts as in a sport caught between elite American capital and the Saudi Royals, calling out the autocratic regime’s sportswashing for what it is and criticizing players like Bryson DeChambeau who took LIV’s blood money while the PGA Tour pretended they cared about pesky things like morality. That the PGA decided once Rory stuck his neck out for them that they ought to be the one to bring the blade down on it through their deal with LIV made him even more of a sympathetic figure as he was left alone on an island by his own commanders during what he was told was a war. Golf is by far the most difficult sport to find guys genuinely worth rooting for as it is the ultimate and quite literal check-cashing sport, but if anyone had earned the title this decade, it was Rory.

So when he missed two puts that will reverberate throughout history at the U.S. Open last year to hand LIV yet another victory in this hell world we cannot escape form, the golf world’s pain was Rory’s pain. He had already won the U.S. Open in 2011, but the symbolic moment of him being able to hand LIV golf a real metaphorical loss was tough to swallow. Doubly more so when he missed putts to lose it that were short enough that weekend hackers like me are deluded enough to think we could make it (let’s be real, you and I could not keep a putt on a U.S. Open green, let alone hole one out).

So now that we have laid the backdrop from last summer, we can pivot to the biggest sports news in the world on Sunday, where Rory McIlroy came into the final round of the Masters with a two-shot lead on Bryson DeChambeau in yet another moment proving that time is a flat circle. After Rory gave the lead away in just two holes to open their Sunday pairing that CBS spent the past year making offerings to the golf gods to get, it seemed like we were all boarding the “here we go again” train with a man who is no stranger to Sunday collapses.

But then on the third hole, the whole world changed again. Bryson, the man known for using a killer combination of science and muscle to hit the ball farther than anyone, took a dainty little iron off the tee to stay safe on a short par four. Big man Rory pulled driver and smashed his tee shot near the green for the first big turning point in the match. This made all the difference in the world as the LIV star hit his next shot to two-putt range while Rory put some sweet spin on his short shot to get it to one-putt range to change the vibes and steal the lead back.

McIlroy threw another dart to within ten feet to birdie the next hole too while Bryson yanked his tee shot left, and his impending choke two holes ago turned into a three-shot lead as the wild Masters leaderboard quickly told sports fans that their Sunday afternoon plans were filled. This chaotic start was a preview of what virtually everyone agrees today is one of the most dramatic golf tournaments they have ever seen. After holding steady for the next four holes, Rory extended his lead going into the back nine, and many like me started to foolishly believe.

When Golf Loves You Back

In the background of the Rory-Bryson galactic proxy war was Justin Rose playing a sensational round of golf a couple groups ahead of them. Bryson was fighting himself as it became clear by the 10th hole that the dramatic one-on-one fight the CBS producers thought they had was probably going to take a backseat to Rory chasing a number.

After DeChambeau found the hazard on #11, the network seemed resigned to their fate of rooting for Rose, as the play-by-play guy said “whatever you think of Bryson, he’s good for golf” as the Saudi proxy prince sheepishly tapped in for double-bogey and removed himself from the forefront of everyone’s minds, dealing LIV the metaphorical blow so many wanted last summer.

Ludvig Aberg, who finished second at last year’s Masters, was making a charge along with Rose, and on the 13th hole, the earth shifted under everyone’s feet again. Rory hit his worst shot of the day into Rae’s Creek from 90 yards out, the kind of disaster my deluded golf brain genuinely does believe I could have avoided, and all of a sudden, he was tied with Justin Rose and just two up on Aberg, who would have a putt to take the lead a couple holes later as the entire leaderboard tied itself in knots as Rory genuinely was going through it again.

But just as the “here we go again” train made another routine stop in Roryville, he decided to let it pass through on #15 as he hit perhaps the most clutch shot of his career from under a tree branch to inside ten feet for eagle. I’m still cackling at this absurdity. What a shot.

“How could Rory possibly lose after that?” said myself and everyone else who apparently forgot what had happened just ten minutes ago. Rory missed a birdie putt on #16 at the same time that Justin Rose hit his birdie putt that dreams are made of, putting him in the clubhouse after #18 at 11 under, tied with Rory who was walking to the 17th tee.

Those of us who believed on #15 were vindicated soon after, as Rory hit another preposterous shot proving why the golf world is so obsessed with his skillset, sticking another iron to two feet for a tap in birdie to take the lead to #18 while CBS interspersed shots of Justin Rose on the practice range preparing for a potential playoff.

You hit that shot in that spot with the weight of the whole world on your shoulders and then bury the putt after it to take the lead into #18? “Rose can probably stop swinging” said those of us with terminal short-term memory loss.

After pushing his approach on #18 into the bunker and getting out safely, Rory gave himself a putt similar to the ones he gagged away at the U.S. Open, this time to win the Masters and become the first player since Tiger to complete the career grand slam. Time to get up and down and exercise some demons, right?

This fucking bullshit is why I wrote “golf will never love you back” last summer. Fuck this man. This is biblical. Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a mountain-level sadism. If Rory wasn’t going to make that putt, how in the world could he possibly walk right back to the 18th tee to face Justin “I just shot a 66 at the Masters” Rose in a sudden death playoff for all the marbles?

Because golf ultimately doesn’t care about you. Man makes the game about himself, as both my contradictory titles about Rory prove, but at its core, golf is an agent of chaos man aims to tame. Justin Rose has his own storied history with Sunday collapses and the golf gods decided it was best for him to keep authoring his own Sisyphean-quest and give Rory a break. After both nailed good tee shots, Rose hit a wedge to where you are supposed to on the 18th green, giving him a shorter putt than the one he just made to force the playoff. Rory stepped up with a wedge in his hand, and he decided that this was the moment that everything will change forever.

This dart one hole after he deposited that same shot in the right bunker will go down in history, because it helped put pressure on Rose who just missed his putt and gave Rory a read on how to complete his lifelong quest. The emotion that McIlroy displayed after finally scaling the mountain vindicated why golf fans care about this guy so much. The symbolism of his whole career and the evolution of golf alongside it was coursing throughout this entire moment.

Rory’s vulnerability has always made him connect more with fans, and this moment showed why. You could see all the off-course battles of the last few years, and the on-course ones of the last fourteen where Rory began this chase by taking a four-shot lead into Sunday at Augusta, then coming unglued on the back nine–all of that just melted away into sheer triumph. All that struggle and anguish led to this moment, and every golfer can appreciate what it meant to him.

Because you have to savor those wonderful fleeting successes you earn given how often golf does not love you back. None of us hackers are going to win the Masters, but we keep going out every weekend chasing our own low-level Masters-style goals. The inherent beauty of golf is that you alone control your destiny, and you are expected to keep track of it. Sure, you can do what the president does and write down scores you didn’t earn, but ultimately the only one that truly hurts is you because you more than anyone know that your whole life is a lie. Golf is brutal honesty in sport form, as you must be relentlessly disciplined and technical in your approach and always honest with yourself if you ever want to experience any of its true highs amidst its endless lows.

Golf is not a sport for the mentally weary, and it grinds you down much like baseball does because it is also a sport defined by failure that can be easily extrapolated on to life’s struggles. In so many ways, Rory McIlroy embodied the helpless feeling that failure in golf and life induces, but his moment a decade-plus in the making that will live forever proves that golf sometimes can love you back if you are willing to do the hard work of loving it first.

 
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