Rory McIlroy became one of the biggest sports stories of 2025 when he finally got his Masters win.Eric Gay/The Associated Press
There are a lot of dreary literary genres, but few toss up more unreadable dreck than the sports biography. Is there anything less revealing than the adventures of someone who was born with it? It’s like taking personal finance advice from a Rothschild.
After Gay Talese’s The Loser (an article, but containing more than any book) and J.R. Moehringer’s Andre Agassi bio, people ought to have learned – if you have nothing interesting to say, feel no need to say it.
But the books keep coming because big timers get what the small timers don’t. SNL hosting gigs are great, and you can have a jillion followers on Instagram, but you don’t really matter until someone has cut you up between hard covers.
This week, as he begins his postprandial Masters, Rory McIlroy gets that treatment.
Based on the early returns, there isn’t much that’s salacious in Alan Shipnuck’s Rory. It’s definitely not getting the response of Shipnuck’s last golf bio, wherein he took Phil Mickelson apart like an old Buick.
According to Rory, McIlroy once broke up with a fiancée in a caddish manner. While married, he may have gone all the way off the record with a golf journalist, but probably not. In between, he has been prone to moods.
You call these war stories? They aren’t even skirmishes. They’re barely troop movements.
With the Masters beginning Thursday, McIlroy has a chance to establish himself as one of golf's greats – or he may slide into obscurity, Cathal Kelly writes.Hector Vivas/Getty Images
What matters here is the title, a mononymic, and the cover, an overlit, Avedon-esque portrait of the man in question. It’s a cover that dares you not to know the person on it.
It wasn’t planned this way, but it makes sense that the book comes out just as Tiger Woods exits stage left for however long you need to stay in Swiss rehab to avoid jail on a DUI charge in Florida.
McIlroy would love to loom over golf the way Woods once did, and it shows. The Northern Irishman is the one who likes making big statements about the game – something Woods didn’t start doing until his hands deserted him, and has never had the art of.
Like Woods, McIlroy had a glow up in his late 20s, is a one-man branding exercise and has become a protector of the true golf faith.
He’s done all these things like Woods, but none of them at Woods’ level. The only thing he’s done better is absorb punishment with grace. For 10 years, he was golf’s most famous choke artist, and managed to push through.
At 36, Woods had 14 majors, the sex scandal to rule them all and was on the slide. McIlroy’s 36 now, with fewer majors and less media heat, but acting like he has plenty of runway left.
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If this year’s Masters – which begins on Thursday – has a story, that’s it. Is McIlroy going to become one of the great ones, or is he an Oh-Yeah-Him?
Ten, 15 years after they’re done, when their name is mentioned, will people nod because they can’t forget or will they say, “Oh yeah, him.” Tom Brady is an immortal. Aaron Rodgers is an Oh-Yeah-Him.
McIlroy is the Oh-Yeah-Him most likely to jump a level. So first things first – win more. At least double the majors he has now.
McIlroy has five, fewer than Nick Faldo and Lee Trevino. Faldo is probably the right comparison here – a good looking, edgy by golf standards Brit who thumbed his nose at the establishment by having a woman caddy. That’s how low the bar is.
You could see the second half of McIlroy’s professional life laying out like Faldo’s. Play 10 more years. Win one or two big ones. Slide into media. How soothing will it be in 15 years’ time, listening to McIlroy narrate how tricky that dogleg left is on Augusta’s 10th green?
The other path is a midlife eruption. If the goal is golf’s Rushmore, that should start immediately. Winning two Masters in a row – something Woods did last – would be a statement of intent.
Shrugging off all the younger, groovier competition, and for some stretch of time, would be the real achievement. McIlroy has never had a period of sustained dominance in the way Woods, Scottie Scheffler and even Brooks Koepka have had. That’s an absolute necessity in order to be thought of in best-ever terms.
Winning two Masters in a row, a feat last accomplished by Tiger Woods, would be a career-defining moment for McIlroy.Mike Blake/Reuters
No sport loves its has-beens like golf. Without even realizing it, guys pass over into that pale from year to year. One year, you turn on the Masters and Jason Day or Rickie Fowler are going concerns. Next year, they’re still there, but they’re statement wallpaper. They’re on hand to give the room some atmosphere, not to do anything special.
McIlroy is already at risk of becoming a has-been. As big a deal as he is right now, that could also signal a kind of farewell. All it would take is a bad run, or a serious injury, coinciding with the emergence of a couple of charismatic youngsters. Late 30s – a dangerous age for men, for all sorts of reasons.
The thing McIlroy has going for him is that people like him. He’s been beaten up enough to understand the risks of coming on too strong. He isn’t branching out into documentary filmmaking or politics. When he talks, he comes off smart, but not too smart.
He’ll never have the receding charisma of a Scheffler, or the live-wire energy of a Bryson DeChambeau, but he has been able to identify a niche. He’s the guy who keeps going.
In a Wall Street Journal review of Shipnuck’s book, a psychologist who once worked with McIlroy is quoted as giving him this advice: “Don’t be afraid to be great. But to be great, you have to be willing to get ripped to shreds.”
It’s advice few pros are willing to hear. Doing it better than anyone else is one angle in on immortality. But in the end, you still need to win the ones no one really thought you could.