AUGUSTA, Ga.—So we’re teed up for another Sunday at Augusta. And isn’t this why we watch sports?
In the grand scheme of golf history, there are probably only two ways the 89th Masters can end. Sunday’s final round will either be remembered for Rory McIlroy’s long-awaited coronation, or it’ll be lamented for another heartbreaking collapse. It’ll either end with McIlroy pulling on the green jacket to become just the sixth player in the sport’s history to achieve the career grand slam. Or it’ll be the 35-year-old McIlroy, grey around the ears in the nearly 11 years since he last won a major, lamenting another missed chance while the rest of us wonder if the ghosts of failures past are just too haunting for even golf’s most talented practitioner to ever overcome.
However it ends, judging by the quality of the theatre of Saturday’s electric third round, it figures to be the closest thing to must-watch golf since Tiger Woods last stalked a major. In the final pairing — McIlroy at 12 under par, Bryson DeChambeau at 10 under — are perhaps the two most popular golfers on the planet not currently rehabbing an Achilles tendon injury. And the guy in sole possession of third place — Listowel, Ont.’s Corey Conners — is just the third Canadian to head into the final round of a Masters in the top three.
Lee Elder’s one-man desegregation of the Masters, as much as it has been rightly immortalized, was hardly the stuff of a neat storybook.
Lee Elder’s one-man desegregation of the Masters, as much as it has been rightly immortalized, was hardly the stuff of a neat storybook.
The last one, Mike Weir in 2003, finished the third round in second place, two shots back of first, and we all know how that turned out. Conners, at 8 under for the tourney, has double the ground to make up. But as Ireland’s Shane Lowry said after he bogeyed Saturday’s final two holes to fall seven shots back of his pal McIlroy: “Things can happen around here.”
That’s the truth of it. As much as McIlroy’s legacy is Sunday’s main vein, there are of course infinite alternate endings. And there are plenty of leaderboard occupants envisioning their Charl Schwarzel moment. Schwarzel, of course, won the green jacket the last time McIlroy held the 54-hole lead at the Masters back in 2011. You know the old cliché about how the Masters doesn’t begin until the back nine on Sunday? When last McIlroy had the Masters lead making the Sunday turn — well, everyone remembers the snap hook that will live in infamy, and how Schwarzel slid into a lifetime invitation to the champions dinner.
McIlroy, en route to a second straight 66, blew into the third round of the Masters like a force of nature. And you could have forgiven Conners, playing alongside, if he’d gotten blown away in the tornado.
On the first hole, McIlroy outdrove his Canadian cohort by 57 yards, stuck a wedge close and made a birdie. On the second hole, McIlroy outdrove Conners by 53 yards — which is saying something since Conners, nobody’s idea of a bunter, hit it 316 yards. And when McIlroy chipped in for eagle it was showtime, the beginning of a stretch of six straight threes in a McIlroy round that saw two eagles and his usual roller-coaster intrigue.
For all that, Conners didn’t shrink. He drained a birdie putt on No. 2 with the crowd still buzzing for Rory, not Corey.
As Conners said after: “(McIlroy) was fun to watch, but I had to get to work.”
Twenty years after Weir made Canadian history and won the 2003 Masters, the stories from those involved in that seismic moment still resonate.
Twenty years after Weir made Canadian history and won the 2003 Masters, the stories from those involved in that seismic moment still resonate.
Work he did, shooting a second straight 2-under 70 to put himself in the second-last pairing with 2018 Masters champion Patrick Reed. The leaderboard is no joke. Only two among the top 10 have yet to win a major. That’d be Conners, the world No. 21, and Ludvig Åberg, No. 5 and the 2024 Masters runner-up who’ll begin six shots back of McIlroy. Neither are fluke contenders.
But the definition of “contender” is in the eye of the beholder and the belief of the guy holding the club. You can get the idea DeChambeau feels he has McIlroy’s number.
In the final round of last summer’s U.S. Open at Pinehurst the Northern Irishman held the solo lead down the stretch before he bogeyed three of the final four holes to allow a surging DeChambeau a path to victory. DeChambeau, with a seismic sand save on the final hole, seized it for his second U.S. Open title.
On Saturday, after DeChambeau birdied three of the final four holes to pull into second place — rolling in a 48-foot walk-off birdie on No. 18 to rouse the gallery for the umpteenth time — he acknowledged he was consciously shooting to get himself into the final pairing alongside McIlroy.
A dive team is on hand for the annual Par-3 Contest, just in case anybody ends up in the water.
A dive team is on hand for the annual Par-3 Contest, just in case anybody ends up in the water.
“It was definitely fun knowing that it was Rory, and knowing that we could have a good matchup tomorrow,” DeChambeau said. “Like I said, we’re not the only players out there. There’s still a lot of great players. But it’s going to be a fun test.”
It’ll be a fun test that’ll end in coronation or collapse. Nobody doubts that McIlroy’s talent is as enormous as Sunday’s stakes. But nobody’s sizing McIlroy for the jacket just yet.
“If (McIlroy) doesn’t do anything early (Sunday), there’s some pressure,” said Jason Day, who’ll begin Sunday seven strokes in arrears. “That’s the goal.”
Correction - April 13, 2025
This article was updated from a previous version that mistakenly said Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau played alongside each other in the final round of the 2024 U.S. Open. In fact, they were not paired up.
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