The road to Rory McIlroy’s first green jacket wasn’t short of drama.
Before he sealed golf’s Grand Slam with a one-hole playoff win over Justin Rose at the 2025 Masters, the Northern Irishman had a tense moment in the final round with longtime rival Bryson DeChambeau, as the playing partners debated who would be putting first on the par-4 ninth hole at Augusta National.
“I thought it very clearly was my putt. I thought his ball was slightly closer than mine,” McIlroy recalled in a newly released preview for the upcoming Amazon documentary “Rory McIlroy: The Masters Wait.”
“We sort of look at each other, and I’m like, ‘Well, I think it’s me to go.’ And he’s like, ‘I think it’s me to go.’”
McIlroy, looking to leave a disastrous double-bogey start on hole No. 1 in the rearview, was aiming to putt first “because if you can hole that putt before your opponent, it puts the pressure on them.”
DeChambeau, who recorded a birdie and two bogeys entering the ninth hole, then offered a solution McIlroy wasn’t particularly fond of with his elusive fifth major on the line.
“He goes, ‘Why don’t we just throw a tee up for it to see who goes first?’ And I’m like, no, this is the final round of the Masters. This isn’t some, like, game on a Tuesday afternoon somewhere. I’m like, ‘No,’” McIlroy said. “I wasn’t going to wilt in that situation. I was just going to stand firm.”
McIlroy, 36, suggested bringing in a ref to measure before DeChambeau, 32, let his opponent go first, resulting in a birdie for the eventual Masters champ.
“I was proud of myself for holding my ground,” he said.
DeChambeau would then miss his birdie to record a par.
The rollercoaster continued on the back nine for both McIlroy and DeChambeau, with the LIV Golf star carding a three-over 75 in the weekend’s final round.
Speaking to reporters afterward, DeChambeau said McIlroy did not engage throughout the day.
“He didn’t talk to me once all day,” the two-time major winner said.
McIlroy, who shot a one-over 73 before his playoff triumph on the 18th, later defended his all-business approach with DeChambeau.
“I don’t know what he was expecting, like, we were trying to win the Masters, I’m not going to try and be his best mate out there,” McIlroy said last May.
“Everyone approaches the game in different ways and, yeah, I was focused on myself and what I needed to do, and that’s really all that it was. It wasn’t anything against him, I felt that’s what I needed to do to try to get the best out of myself that day.”
McIlroy’s Masters defense begins on April 9.
