Rory McIlroy insists he has no fear of getting his heart broken this week as he arrives at the Masters Tournament seeking the career Grand Slam for the 11th time.
The Northern Irishman’s first taste of Augusta National disappointment came 14 years ago when he entered the final day with a four-shot lead but fired a closing 80 to fall away.
At just 21, that could have knocked his rise in the game off course but he responded in emphatic fashion, winning the U.S. Open in record style before adding US PGA Championship titles in 2012 and 2014.
Since then he has been an almost constant in the top ten of the Official World Golf Ranking, spending several spells at World Number One and winning multiple Harry Vardon Trophies, FedEx Cups and Ryder Cups but more Major glory has so far eluded him.
With every Major, and especially every Masters, that goes by the external pressure to end that drought ramps up but McIlroy enters this week in fine form and feeling no fear.
“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,” he said. “People, I think, instinctively as human beings, we hold back sometimes because of the fear of getting hurt, whether that's a conscious decision or subconscious decision. I think I was doing that on the golf course a little bit for a few years.
“But I think once you go through that, once you go through those heartbreaks as I call them, or disappointments, you get to a place where you remember how it feels and you wake up the next day and you're like, ‘yeah, life goes on, it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be’.
“It's going through those times, especially in recent memory, where the last few years I've had chances to win some of the biggest golf tournaments in the world and it hasn't quite happened. But life moves on. You dust yourself off and you go again.
“I think that's why I've become a little more comfortable in laying everything out there and being somewhat vulnerable at times.”
Since the blow of missing the cut on home soil at Royal Portrush in The Open Championship in 2019, McIlroy has finished in the top ten at 11 of 19 Majors with three runner-up finishes.
The latest of those came in June’s U.S. Open when he led by two with five to play but a pair of short missed putts on the way home saw him fall just short.
His response has again been impressive, taking his tally of Harry Vardon Trophies to six on the DP World Tour with the help of a victory at the DP World Tour Championship.
In 2025 he has two victories on the PGA TOUR at the AT&T Pebble Beach Invitational and THE PLAYERS Championship, prompting some to say he has never been in better form coming down Magnolia Lane.
McIlroy himself, however, is keen to block out the noise and focus on what he can control.
“Over the course of my career I think I've showed quite a lot of resilience from setbacks,” he said. “I feel like I've done the same again, especially post-June last year and the golf that I've played since then and it's something that I'm really proud of.
“You have setbacks and you have disappointments but as long as you can learn from them and move forward and try to put those learnings into practise I feel like (that) is very, very important. I feel like I've showed that quite a lot over the course of my career.
“When you have a long career like I have had, luckily, you sort of just learn to roll with the punches, the good times, the bad times, knowing that if you do the right work and you practise the right way, that those disappointments will turn into good times again pretty soon.
“I need to treat this tournament like all the other tournaments that I play throughout the year.
“I understand the narrative and the noise and there's a lot of anticipation and build-up coming into this tournament each and every year but I just have to keep my head down and focus on my job.”
