I followed Rory McIlroy for every shot of his Masters win. Here’s what you didn’t see.

Harry Diamond surveys the scene by the first tee at Augusta National. Furrowing his brow, he has distanced himself from his man on the adjacent putting green but looks deep in thought.

To a spine-tingling, almost visceral roar, Rory McIlroy has weaved through the mob of patrons for his date with destiny. 

He wanders around the green, looking purposeful but tense. Despite hitting well over 30 putts to random hole locations, he barely holes a thing. 

“He’s still thinking about Bridgerton,” a fan beside me chuckles, sniping at McIlroy’s Netflix preference during tournament week. 

“This is the biggest day of his life,” muses an elderly gentleman. Strangely in this sporting context, it doesn’t feel like he’s exaggerating. 

Because, for all the anticipation and buzz by the first tee on this balmy Georgia Sunday, you couldn’t shake this horrible sense that McIlroy had reached the endgame. This was to be McIlroy’s best or worst ever day on a golf course. No in between. 

Billed as a Green Jacket showdown with his US Open heartbreaker Bryson DeChambeau, McIlroy had the chance to exorcise the demons that have followed him since 2011. Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Ben Hogan, Gary Player and Gene Sarazen. That’s the fabled club he’s just 18 holes away from joining and becoming just the sixth man in history to complete the career grand slam. 

DeChambeau’s circumstances feel wildly different, but in some ways, no less significant. The burly Californian, aiming to become only the third player after Nicklaus and Woods to win the US Open, US Amateur and the Masters, strolls onto the practice green alone, moments after McIlroy has departed for the tee. He hits only a handful of putts and that’s his lot.

• Tiger Woods leads tributes to new Masters champion Tiger Woods

• 9 things Rory McIlroy gets for winning The Masters

McIlroy is steely-eyed but allows himself a wry smile as he acknowledges a young fan cheering his name and shakes hands with the starter. He greets DeChambeau, who has arrived just on time, before glancing down at his yardage book.

“I have a few little notes written in the back of my yardage book that I glance at every now and again while I’m walking the fairway,” McIlroy said on Saturday. “You know, just little reminders.”

Did he mind divulging what they were?

“I mean, all the cliché mantras that you’ve heard before, really,” he smiled. 

“No pain, no gain,” would be an adequately cliché guess here, right?

Because, oh boy, there was going to be pain. 

The words of Bob Rotella must have been ringing in his ears, too. “Don’t try to do too much too early,” his sports psychologist told him, just before he became the first man to start a Masters round with six consecutive threes on Saturday.

That day belonged emphatically to McIlroy, but this is a new one. In a week in which he has flicked through six chapters of John Grisham’s ominously-titled “The Reckoning”, here is McIlroy’s point of no return. 

And so his first swing of the day is suitably nervous, pushed straight into the top of the right bunker that he had carried in anger just 24 hours earlier. DeChambeau, after a handful of “USA, USA” chants hooks one nervously into the pine straw down the left. 

McIlroy’s manager, Sean O’Flaherty, is among the jittering patrons in the pines, trying to get any vantage point he can. It feels as if his man has the advantage, but with these steep lips, McIlroy can only move his ball 70 yards ahead. Then after smacking his par putt through the break, he is from nowhere faced with double. DeChambeau manages a miraculous par and from two-up in this supposed match play contest, we are all-square. 

“In a funny way, I feel like the double bogey at the first sort of settled my nerves,” McIlroy laughed afterwards. Try telling the nail-biting patrons that. 

Among the huge galleries, it is impossible to get anywhere near the second tee, so you’re playing a guessing game. “Bunker again,” someone next to me claims. Sigh. DeChambeau, bounding down the hill of Pink Dogwood, makes a fuss-free birdie. McIlroy can only manage par.

In the space of two holes, he’s hit five more shots than he did on Saturday. DeChambeau has his nose in front and it feels like McIlroy’s hard work from his pair of 66s is undone.

But at least he had indeed settled.

A stunning approach to the third sets up a short birdie putt to push the pressure right back on DeChambeau. “RORY, RORY,” they holler, while DeChambeau errs with an inexplicable three-putt of his own. Groans for the American, of course. But also grins of excitement. McIlroy had his lead back. 

It became so plainly clear on this surreal Masters Sunday who the people’s champion was while McIlroy and DeChambeau were waiting by the fourth tee. Shuffling my way through the crowd, I notice the small leaderboard change to the right of the green in the distance. The roars for the two-shot swing sweep from the greenside grandstand and reverberate through the pines.

Pandemonium then meets McIlroy’s glorious, towering iron shot that lands just over our heads and settles to within nine feet of the pin.

“I love your shoes, Rory,” one patron bellows, somehow breaking up the agonising tension.

“I’m feeling Irish today,” another oiled-up American patron laughs.

And when McIlroy nails his birdie putt and DeChambeau can’t get up-and-down from the fringe, he opens up a three-shot lead.

“One of the most important ones for me was the second shot on three,” McIlroy later said. “To judge that well and make a three there, when Bryson then made 5, and then to go ahead and birdie the next hole, as well – it was a huge moment.”

On the brutally difficult fifth, McIlroy finds the pine straw on the right and his wife Erica, on the opposite side of the fairway, cannot look. “I’m so nervous,” a lady a few feet away from her says. A penny for how Erica is feeling, then.

But this genius is hardly daunted by miracle recoveries and, after running his approach through the back of the green, maintains his momentum by saving par.

McIlroy remains laser-focused, unwilling to take in his surroundings, while the showman DeChambeau laps up the adulation on his walks to the tee boxes. As DeChambeau discussed afterwards, McIlroy had no interest in making friends. “Didn’t talk to me once all day,” he said. “He wouldn’t talk to me.” 

Regulation pars follow on six as the stars head back up the hill to seven. “Oh shit!” someone soon shouts, as McIlroy clips the branch in front of him with his approach. Somehow, his ball has flown all the way to the hole, leaving the previously edgy McIlroy in fits of laughter.

But up ahead on the green, another chance goes a-begging.

Improving McIlroy’s case is DeChambeau’s ongoing struggle with distance control with his irons. On the par-5 eighth, with both chunking out of a bunker, he goes long with his approach.

McIlroy then converts a sumptuous birdie on nine and the roars as you head past the patrons by the 18th green and towards the tenth tee are deafening. 

And it is at this point we go back to the clichés.

They say the Masters never starts until the second nine on Sunday but that maxim is so pertinent when McIlroy is holding the same four-shot lead he enjoyed on that haunting day fourteen years ago. 

Yes, McIlroy looked in complete control. But we had seen this script before. Were things different this time? 

And after splitting the fairway with his tee shot (yes, well away from those fateful cabins), he appears to flirt with disaster once more. Down the left side of the fairway, the gasps are audible as his club drops from his hands on impact. Somehow, despite a thin contact on his approach, his ball rests 15 feet from the hole. DeChambeau has no answer and with another birdie, comes an (unassailable?) five-shot lead.

Amen Corner, of course, always ends someone’s hopes and so it proves for DeChambeau who finds the pond with his approach after a perfect drive down the 11th.

As McIlroy carves his ball around the corner of the pine that stands on the right side of the fairway, those beside me are convinced he has inexplicably found the same watery grave. A bogey five felt perfectly adequate here though, given his healthy advantage. 

Just as McIlroy steps up to approach his tee shot on the 12th, a smattering of groans are heard from the grandstands. The giant leaderboard to McIlroy’s left signals that Justin Rose, who has been making a second nine surge with three straight birdies, has bogeyed ahead on 14. For all the will around these hallowed grounds for McIlroy, there were plenty others who wanted a contest. 

Aware of getting nowhere near the 12th tee shot, I make my way down the side of the 13th fairway to what felt like a procession. As McIlroy, against all normal instincts, lays up with the tournament in his hands, a dozen or so fans begin a chorus of “Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole.” 

“Can’t stand the Europeans,” an American patron retorts. “See your asses in Long Island.”

Oh, they will.

The “Ole’s” continue before McIlroy walks up to hit his pitch shot and presumably line up his putt for a fifth birdie of the day. But wait. Remember, this is Rory McIlroy.

With seemingly the whole of Georgia to the left of him, McIlroy flubs his chip to the only place he can’t, right and into Rae’s Creek. He crouches down to his knees in agony. 

What had he done? The patrons around me, many of whom Irish, are in a state of shock. 

As Rory taps in for his second double bogey of the day – and fourth of the week – a deafening roar rips through the pines to the right on the 16th green. “That must have been Rose,” one of the Irish patrons despairs.

Indeed, Rose has made a two on 16 to match his birdie on 15 and get to minus 11. From nowhere, McIlroy’s lead has evaporated and he is level with Rose. 

The first time McIlroy truly acknowledges the Augusta crowd, however, is when he needs them most. His momentum, before hitting that defining second shot on 15, had frittered away with another bogey on 14 and it was impossible not to think what consequences this devastating defeat would have. The suspense, but then roar as he walked after his 209-yard approach in eerily similar fashion to Saturday’s third round is electrifying. McIlroy lifts his iron to the patrons and manages a small fist pump.

His eagle putt slides past, but a birdie means he is back on level terms.

Over by the amphitheatre on 16, Wayne “Radar” Riley has found an impressive vantage point high and right of the green. Under Augusta National’s strict rules, he is not allowed inside the ropes this week. He informs a few of us via his earpiece that after bogeying 17, Rose has birdied 18 and is in the clubhouse at minus 11. 

“A big moment in the world of golf,” Riley declares through his Sky Sports microphone as McIlroy puts his tee into the ground. “What scenes here.” 

Goosebumps, indeed. 

• Rory McIlroy: New Masters champion’s press conference transcript in full

• The Masters 2025: Prize money payout in full

McIlroy hits another fine approach but the crowd who have exerted so much energy on him have lost faith that he’ll make the putt. Another one misses and McIlroy still needs birdie-par to win.

He steadies himself after a nervy tee shot and carries a water bottle all the way up the 17th fairway. A comfort blanket, perhaps, just like it seems to be for Rickie Fowler? 

Or maybe he’s just thirsty. Not many of us on these grounds have a sane thought left at this point.

Anyway, whatever he was doing, it worked and McIlroy finally has a birdie putt he couldn’t miss. And with that, the tantalising realisation that a par at the last would see him achieve immortality. 

Running at Augusta National is famously prohibited, but the speed-walking championships instead ensued on the hurry up the 18th. An era-defining moment that so many of us thought had slipped by was back on. I find a vantage point, about 50 yards short of the huge sand trap that guards the front of the green. 

After wading through the crowds, I see McIlroy chunking a bunker shot down the slope, but can’t see where it lands. By the nature of the cheers up ahead, we all agree it’s around about the six foot range.

One patron, who had queued all day to be there, and witness it, can’t look and hides underneath his cap. McIlroy puffs out his cheeks and stalks the green nervously. But then, to reactions that were more howls of despair than whimpers, his ball stays up. It’s almost too much to bear. 

Nobody moves an inch as McIlroy and Rose are whisked back to the tee for the playoff. Rose, who I learn has played the second nine in a spellbinding six-under-par, now has his own chance of redemption, eight years after his playoff defeat to Sergio Garcia on this very same hole. 

Rose’s approach earns raptures, but McIlroy’s brings the house down. This must be within gimme range, surely? We are impaired by the brow of the colossus front bunker. Then as Rose’s birdie effort slides by, McIlroy is met with his moment of reckoning once more.

The ball disappears and so does McIlroy, below the bunker and flat onto the green. The job had finally, finally been done. The Green Jacket was his.

A little while later after a visit to Butler Cabin, McIlroy bounds into the interview room, clad in the Green Jacket that he had always dreamed of wearing but had for so long eluded him. It is here McIlroy chokes up when asked about his indispensable right-hand man.

“I’ve known Harry since I was seven years old,” he begins. “I met him on the putting green at Holywood Golf Club. We’ve had so many good times together. He’s been like a big brother to me the whole way through my life.

“To be able to share this with him after all the close calls that we’ve had, all the crap that he’s had to take from people that don’t know anything about the game –  yeah, this one is just as much his as it is mine.

“He’s a massive part of what I do, and I couldn’t think of anyone better to share it with than him.”

Just 45 minutes earlier, Diamond had stepped outside of the scorer’s building, a lump in his throat and a smile as wide as the setting Georgia sun, finally unburdened yet struggling to process what had just gone before.

After an eternity of uncertainty, his man had done it.

They had done it.

Ben Parsons is the Senior Writer at bunkered and is the man to come to for all of the latest news, across both the professional and amateur games. Formerly of The Mirror and Press Association, he is a member at Halifax Golf Club and is a long-suffering fan of both Manchester United and the Wales rugby team.