Rory McIlroy has the Masters and a Grand Slam. That gives him freedom to chase more

AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — The Mount Rushmore of golf now has six faces carved into granite, and for that Rory McIlroy should feel as though he achieved the highest pinnacle in golf. But there is so much more ahead for McIlroy. He turns 36 next month and believes he is a better player than he was 10 years ago. There is little evidence to suggest otherwise. In his 18 years on tour — half his life as a professional golfer — McIlroy has never won three times before the calendar turned to May. He has never felt so much freedom. He is playing with house money, and that has nothing to do with the $13.2 million he already has won this year in his six starts on the PGA Tour alone. He is the Masters champion. He now has a locker upstairs in the Augusta National clubhouse where he will find a size 38 green jacket waiting for him the rest of his life, a seat at the table Tuesday night at the Masters Club dinner. This was 11 years in the making. What a feeling. The chest heaving as McIlroy dropped his head on the 18th green after winning was sheer relief. "The joy came pretty soon after that," he said, and that much was evident by the look on his face when Scottie Scheffler helped him slip those arms into a green jacket. "What are we all going to talk about next year?" McIlroy said, first in Butler Cabin and later to start his news conference. That's the freedom he feels. How about next month? The career Grand Slam is in the books. It's not too soon to consider a calendar version of the Grand Slam. The rest of the majors this year certainly line up in his favor. The PGA Championship is next month at Quail Hollow, where McIlroy is a four-time winner. He was among the players who went along with a fantasy question last summer. If the leading player in the FedEx Cup could choose where to hold the Tour Championship, where would it go? McIlroy picked Quail Hollow without hesitation. The U.S. Open is at Oakmont, a big course for big hitters. That would suit him as well as anyone, though his last time there he shot 77 in an opening round held over two days because of rain and was gone by the weekend. The British Open returns to Royal Portrush on his home soil of Northern Ireland, where McIlroy has a score to settle. The last time at Portrush, his own hopes and expectations were so high he hit his opening tee shot out-of-bounds, made an 8 and wound up missing the cut. He returns with more freedom than pressure. All that is a long way off, but it's an example how the conversation about McIlroy has turned. It's no longer what he was lacking but what else he can gain. Scheffler, who was with him in Butler Cabin and during the trophy presentation, offered this observation Tuesday: "I don't have the understanding of what it's like to be asked about the career Grand Slam, but I have a small understanding of what it's like to be asked, 'Hey, you accomplished this, but you haven't accomplished that.' It can be very taxing on people sometimes." Brad Faxon, a close friend who works with McIlroy on his putting, said there was nothing stopping McIlroy now and that he could double his number of majors. "He can go on to win 10," Faxon said. Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus once said a young Tiger Woods had the fundamentals to win 10 green jackets, as many as both of them combined. Woods got halfway there. McIlroy was still 18 holes away from winning his first major in the 2011 U.S. Open at Congressional when Padraig Harrington declared, "If you're going to talk about someone challenging Jack's record, there's your man." Nicklaus has the gold standard in golf with 18 majors. McIlroy now has five, the same as Brooks Koepka, 10 fewer than Woods. It's easy to get caught up in the excitement. This Masters ranks among some of the great moments at Augusta National — Woods in 2019, 2001 and 1997, Nicklaus in 1986 and 1975, Arnold Palmer in 1960. But this wasn't easy for McIlroy, not on Sunday, not the previous 16 years. It had been 11 years since he won any major, and while winning the Masters was his dream, only twice in 16 previous tries did McIlroy go to the back nine with a serious chance of winning. Far more haunted were players like Greg Norman and Tom Weiskopf, David Duval and Ken Venturi. That all had more scar tissue. McIlroy said two years ago after his close call at the U.S. Open that he would go through "100 Sundays like this" to get another major. He would have gone through 1,000 Sundays to get a green jacket, especially considering all that was at stake. McIlroy now is the sixth player with the career Grand Slam, joining Woods, Nicklaus, Gary Player, Ben Hogan and Gene Sarazen. Only four of them actually "won" the career slam because the modern version of it wasn't even a thing until Arnold Palmer declared it one in 1960. The only other player to complete the slam at the Masters was Sarazen in 1935 when it was held for the second time and wasn't even called the Masters. He officially won the Augusta National Invitation Tournament. Green jackets weren't awarded until 1949. The Masters Club dinner on Tuesday night didn't start until 1952. McIlroy really is the only player to get the last leg at the Masters, where memories are strongest as the only major held at the same course. That's how special this was. To consider the height of this achievement is to look not only at who he joined but who is missing from the Mount Rushmore of golf. Sam Snead shares the PGA Tour record with 82 career wins. He's not there because of the U.S. Open. Phil Mickelson has achieved more than McIlroy except for that missing leg of the Grand Slam (also the U.S. Open). Tom Watson had 39 career PGA Tour wins and eight majors. Palmer is arguably the greatest influence in modern golf. Neither won the PGA Championship. McIlroy began to wonder if he would also be one of those "almost" greats. The Masters frees him from that burden. Now it's a matter of how much further he can go.