Tweeth On Tap: Rory, Resilience, and Rapture

We are here to talk about the R word. For everything there is and will be to remember about the 2025 Masters –Rose’s refusal to go away, Bryson’s recusal of his contention, the relief on Rory’s face and the rapture of the crowd surrounding the 18^th green – one word defines this week in golf: Resilience.

On the Wednesday before the tournament, Rory McIlroy, then a four-time major winner rounding into the 11^th year of his quest for the career grand slam, offered the following reflection to the media:

“It happens in all walks of life. At a certain point in someone’s life, someone doesn’t want to fall in love because they don’t want to get their heart broken. People, I think, instinctually as human beings we hold back sometimes because of the fear of getting hurt, whether that’s a conscious decision or subconscious decision, and I think I was doing that on the golf course a little bit for a few years.”

It’s easy to remember all the heartbreaks nested in that reflection: not just 2011 at Augusta, when McIlroy held a 4-shot lead going into the final round only to blow up with a Sunday 80, or the 2018 Masters, where he watched Patrick Reed claim the green jacket from the final pairing, close enough to see the final putt drop but too far away to contend, but the still-too-raw sting of the 2022 Open Championship at St Andrews, and the 2023 and 2024 US Opens at LACC and Pinehurst, where he simply hadn’t done enough in the final rounds to claim tournaments he could’ve – and probably should’ve – won easily.

It's Rory McIlroy. Nothing comes easy.

By now, we know what happened after that Wednesday quote. His opening round featured two egregious double bogeys—catastrophic mistakes that could have ended the tournament right there. He shot 66 on both Friday and Saturday, landing him in the final pairing once again. An opening double bogey cost him the lead, but his courageous front nine play helped him regain it. The worst golf shot of his life came on 13, followed by the greatest shot of his life on 15 to redeem the situation. McIlroy played a lifetime’s worth of golf on Sunday alone. The mental toughness, grit, and sheer resilience it took to close the door on the last accolade he needed for golf immortality are what remain to be remembered about this tournament.

Call it the bounce-back major. Nick Dunlap opened with a 90 and responded with a gritty 71, one of the toughest you’ll ever see from a professional. Max Homa, who was lost in the golf wilderness this year and also lost his caddie, came back to finish tied for 12th and earned an invitation for next year. Justin Rose erased the 36-hole lead with a 75 on Saturday but bounced back with six birdies in his final eight holes to force a playoff. And there was McIlroy, bouncing back from an opening double-bogey that would have sidelined lesser players—the kind of double-bogey that indeed sidelined his playing partner, Bryson DeChambeau, after a disastrous mistake on the 11th hole. Rory, with his patented stride, bounced down the fairway, knocked one off the bank into Rae’s Creek on the 13th, and bounced back with a hooking 7-iron laser from 208 yards to 6 feet. He bounced his approach into the bunker on 18, bounced back in the playoff with a no-doubter gap wedge to 2 feet, and then, instead of bouncing, collapsed to his knees on the 18th green, sobbing and consumed by the moment, relieved of the burden of looking back on a career thrown into the what-if pile. He felt fulfilled by having summoned the resilience needed to win.

Like many fathers yesterday, I made sure my son was watching with me as Rory McIlroy played the last few holes. He’s nine and doesn’t yet love golf, but he knows who Rory is and counts him as his favorite player.

 I don’t know what I expected him to understand about what was happening, but I wanted him to have a memory of watching Rory win the Masters with his dad, so he has a reference point for that kind of resilience if he ever needs to summon it for himself. I wanted him to see the power of self-belief and the reward of persevering through adversity. I wanted him to know what’s on the other side of heartbreak – that our hearts are given to us empty, and the only way to fill them is to let them break first. I wanted him to know that lives are long and short at the same time, and if we’re lucky, we get one or two moments like this one – where the scar tissue reveals a new strength underneath, where we can collapse in the relief of victory, where heartbreak turns into rapture.