Abdimalik Mohamed, sports editor

For many years, athletes have always talked about getting the proverbial “monkey off their back.” What that phrase means is getting that weight of never winning the big one off of their back and that is what happened at the Masters. Steve Young, John Elway, Kevin Garnett and Cooper Wylie have all won in years past, kicking that monkey to the curb. I never really believed in that, especially in sports where you are directly responsible for your performance and you don’t have teammates that you have to rely on. But with the 2025 Masters and the story of one player, that all changed.

Rory McIlroy finally exorcised his demons and won a major at the Masters, and it looked magical. McIlroy debuted at the Masters in 2009 and has been chasing the green jacket ever since. The jubilation on his face was one of someone who had done something that he had dreamed of and worked toward his entire life. Mcllroy was doubted by others and he at times probably doubted himself that he could get the green jacket, but on Sunday, April 13, he got it done. Afterward, clearly emotional given what he had just accomplished, he said in a press conference, “what came out of me on the last screen there was, you know, 11 years if not 14 years of pent up emotion.” 

How we got here during the week was extremely fascinating because McIlroy double bogeyed at the 13th hole and bogeyed again at the 14th hole and followed his birdie with a bogey on the last hole. Despite that, he faced off in a playoff against Justin Rose. This was some of the most intense golf I have ever watched in my life. In my opinion, this tops Tiger Woods’ return in 2019 because of the stakes and the jubilation at the end. Rose played an admirable game but Mcllroy would not be denied and he finally completed the mission, taking home the win in the end.

Mcllroy’s story is one that we should all admire and respect even if you don’t watch or like golf, or even like sports. This is the stuff of movies. You could see the literal weight coming off of his back at the end and it was awesome. One of the things that it reminded me of was — and this is a different sport — when Kevin Garnett left Minnesota and went to the Celtics and won a championship. He was in year 14 and the biggest knock on him was that he wasn’t a winner because when in Minnesota, he lost in the first round in the playoffs every year (mostly because of the quality of teammates) except for 2004 when he won MVP and took the team to the Western Conference Finals and landed on the doorstep of the NBA Finals. When he won, the look on his face was the same as the one on Mcllroy’s — he had just taken that monkey off of his back.