ATLANTA — After trying for the better part of 15 years to win the Masters—and a decade to complete the career Grand Slam—Rory McIlroy understandably is looking forward to returning to Augusta National as a tournament champion.
And he plans to do so sometime well in advance of the 2026 Masters.
As a Masters participant, McIlroy has always been able to visit Augusta National during the club’s opening time, which begins in mid-October. But doing so having won the tournament will make the experience all that much more meaningful.
“I’ve already planned a couple of trips with some friends or some members beforehand,” McIlroy said Tuesday at East Lake Golf Club in advance of the Tour Championship. “It’ll probably be a little emotional. I definitely have planned one trip that my dad [Gerry] is going to come on as well, and my dad wasn’t there when I won, so I think that’ll be a cool moment to be with him.
“It’ll be emotional. Like I still get a little emotional thinking about it. But it’ll be really cool. To go there, I have a lot of members there that have become good friends over the years, and to be able to enjoy that with them and play the golf course again and sort of reminisce over the good and the bad that happened over the course of the week, yeah, that’ll be really cool.”
McIlroy said some of the best visits to Augusta National are away from tournament week.
“It’s a beautiful place to play golf,” McIlroy said. “If you stop to actually look around and look at the plants and look at the trees and hear the birds, it’s a beautiful place to spend your day and to spend your night and go down to the wine cellar and pick a bottle of wine. It’s one of the coolest experiences you can have in golf.
“I’ve always said some of my favorite times at Augusta were when it wasn’t the Masters Tournament, but it’ll be lovely to next time go there and go up to the champions locker room and put on my green jacket and feel like I belong.”
McIlroy also said he’s signed more Masters pin flags than he can count, and that his team actually bought up the remaining ones from the club in order to have for autograph purposes.
“I do know that they had 1,100 extra—like 1,100 left in the merchandise facility at the end of the week, and we took all 1,100,” McIlroy said. “But it’s been a lot. But I’ll never get sick of signing them. I’ve waited 17 years to sign that flag in the middle, and I will never complain about doing it.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Rory McIlroy Already Planning Pre-Masters Visits to Augusta National.