[Picture: Augusta National]
Rory McIlroy swears he will never get tired of signing Masters flags after his victory in April at Augusta National Golf Club. He’ll have at least 1,100 chances to prove it.
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That’s how many he bought in the aftermath of his playoff victory over Justin Rose to finally complete the career Grand Slam (winning all four majors in one’s career).
“They had 1,100 extra … like 1,100 left in the merchandise facility at the end of the week, and we took all 1,100,” McIlroy said proudly during his press conference at East Lake Golf Club ahead of this week’s Tour Championship.
He referenced the unknown rule Augusta National has that only Masters champions are allowed to sign their name inside of the club’s logo on flags.
“I’ve waited 17 years to sign that flag in the middle, and I will never complain about doing it.”
Of course, 1,100 flags excludes the number he already has been asked to sign by friends and well-wishers. He cleaned out the rest of the stock, he said, to be able to give them away as gifts. At $US30 a pop, that’s a quick $US33,000 ($A51,000) he slapped on the credit card. Of course, he earned $US4.2 million, so he barely felt it.
McIlroy, 36, is making his eighth appearance in the final event of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, the longest active streak among the 30 players in the field. Until world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler started being Scottie Scheffler again, winning five times, including two majors—the PGA Championship and the Open Championship—McIlroy was looking like the leading candidate for Player of the Year with three wins. In addition to winning the green jacket, he captured The Players Championship and the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
Ranked second in the world, McIlroy’s level of success hasn’t been the same since leaving Augusta, partly because of Scheffler’s re-emerging dominance once he healed fully from a hand injury in December and partly because the wind clearly had gone out of McIlroy’s sails following such a monumental career achievement.
But the Northern Irishman’s level of enthusiasm talking about his long-sought Masters breakthrough hasn’t waned at all.
He remembers well that he didn’t take his green jacket off until he went to bed that night—well actually the next morning, finally hitting the bed around 3:30 a.m. He awoke about three hours later.
“I woke up, and it’s one of those moments where it’s like, ‘Did that actually happen? And you wake up and you see the green jacket lying over a chair in the bedroom and you think, ‘Yeah, that did happen yesterday.’”
It sure did. But other than a few occasions—approved by the club, he pointed out—he hasn’t put it back on very often. Which surprises him. “I’m reluctant to wear it,” McIlroy said. “It’s not as if I wear it a lot. I have it hanging in my wardrobe in a place where I can see it every day, but I don’t know, I always thought if I had one, if I did win the Masters one day, I’d never have the thing off, and it hasn’t been that way. I haven’t worn it as much as I thought I would.”
A busy competitive schedule still awaits the five-time major winner the rest of this year with the Ryder Cup, events on the DP World Tour, and the Australian Open at Royal Melbourne—a total of seven tournaments. But his most meaningful stop will be a return to Augusta National. Actually, he has a couple of trips to Georgia upcoming. He’ll savour them like never before.
“It’s a beautiful place to play golf. If you stop to actually look around and look at the plants and look at the trees and hear the birds, it’s a beautiful place to spend your day and to spend your night and go down to the wine cellar and pick a bottle of wine. It’s one of the coolest experiences you can have in golf,” he said whimsically. “I’ve always said some of my favourite times at Augusta were when it wasn’t the Masters Tournament, but it’ll be lovely to next time go there and go up to the champions locker room and put on my green jacket and feel like I belong.”
The first of those occasions will be particularly meaningful, he added.
“It’ll probably be a little emotional,” McIlroy admitted. “I definitely have planned one trip that my dad is going to come on as well, and my dad wasn’t there when I won, so I think that’ll be a cool moment to be with him. Yeah, it’ll be emotional. Like. I still get a little emotional thinking about it.”