In modern sports, there’s much to complain about and much to celebrate.
One of the best of the latter is the exact moment after a championship is won. The reaction to the culmination of so much talent and effort and focus and determination combining to produce such achievement … well, it doesn’t get a whole lot better than seeing the ultimate competitive reward captured and enjoyed, exulted in. Fans likely will never fully know the feeling of winning a major championship, but that precludes them not one bit from vicariously borrowing just a piece of that feeling.
All of that was seen and felt when Rory McIlroy won the Masters on Sunday, as he drilled his final putt in a playoff for victory at Augusta, a victory the 2025 champion had chased for the better part of a decade and a half. He’d won all the other majors, and finally he’d be permitted to don the famous green jacket, the prize awarded to every Masters winner.
(Doug Mills | The New York Times) Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland reacts after winning the playoff hole during the final round of the Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Ga., Sunday, April 13, 2025.
The coolest part arrived in the seconds after that last putt rolled in, when McIlroy dropped to his knees, his face laid flat on the smooth, short turf, his body trembling, the Rainbirds in his eyes watering the 18th green with tears that had welled up not just over the span of a few days, not even over the length of a sparkling career, but, rather, since the man was a young boy, dreaming with his parents of a very moment that in spectacular reality turned out to be more gratifying than even the imagination could have stirred.
And we could all watch in amazement, so thrilled for a golfer most of us will never know or meet, but who, in the glory of it all, we could connect with in a human sort of way, in the purest of all sports instants. If further connection is needed, it is said that McIlroy played some junior golf right here in Utah, hacking away on tee boxes and fairways on courses so familiar to golfers here.
Sure, McIlroy will take the prize money, as he had in so many tournaments before. That’s not to be ignored or glossed over. Money, money, money is everywhere in pro sports. And this particular winner, like so many others, is a pro’s pro.
But that’s not why McIlroy was bawling like a baby.
It’s notable what is revealed when the prize is won, and so much of everything else is stripped away. The sometimes-iron-faced countenance, the churlishness, the ego, the self-importance, the fame, the fortune, all of the whatever that shoves and covers what’s deep inside in the shadows.
Maybe you love what you think you do know about Rory McIlroy. Maybe you don’t. But when a or the lifelong goal is at last accomplished, none of the like or dislike matters. What really matters is the human achievement and everything that was poured into it.
That’s the best sports has to offer. Not just for the champion himself or herself, but for those who get to wipe away some of the ridiculousness that at times accompanies and obscures sports.
That’s why winning a title carries so much meaning. When you watch, for instance, a major league outfit win the World Series, and after the final out, the victors, a group of filthy-rich individuals whose fat bank accounts allow them to not have a single financial worry of any sort dog-pile on the mound like a bunch of 12-year-old Little Leaguers, that is a moment that transcends the worldly, straight to the otherworldly.
It is the purest moment in all of sports.
Same with the Super Bowl or the Stanley Cup finals or Wimbledon or … yeah, the Masters.
Rory McIlroy has his green jacket. He has his career Grand Slam. He has his dream fulfilled. It won’t feed the hungry. It won’t end wars. It won’t solve national or international political problems. But as you watch the great golfer, now made greater, walk around the Champion’s Locker Room at Augusta, wearing that freshly won jacket, grinning, thinking about the history there, the greats who have shared that room before, and hear him let out a deep breath and say, “Pretty suh-weeet,” somehow that makes — or should make — the rest of us feel like maybe we can do something of note, too.
No. Not that. We won’t stroll through that space, not have our name mounted there. That’s his realized dream, not ours. But there are other mountains, or at least hills, to climb or try to climb. We can appreciate his dreams, the fulfillment of them, and also find hope for our own.
