Year of Rory: Favorite Moments from 2025

This week, Fried Egg Golf is looking back on the Year of Rory, and recapping the most interesting moments in the most interesting year of his career. Today, the staff shares their favorite moments from McIlroy's year.

Brendan Porath

It’s a great blessing that is not lost on me that I get to attend many of these majors in person, and so for a “Year in Rory” category, I am left torn choosing from a few options. Weep for me, I know. The Masters is almost too much to isolate or distill down into one moment. It’s like walking out of the greatest movie you've ever watched for 2.5 hours and picking a favorite 10-second scene. The bad shot at 13 and good shot at 15 take the headlines. But I’ll never forget the taut and quiet paralysis around the 14th green when he’d finally lost the lead, the full cushion, and it appeared there was no way he’d ever recover and probably ever win another major. How could you after this? That’s it. He’s done. The last hour will be funereal. I’ll also never forget standing right of the 17th green, tippy-toeing and straining to get a glimpse of the green and unable to see the swing from the crest of the fairway, only to have the ball drop from what felt like nowhere and break the total silence. The memory of that ball just landing into that coliseum of people and rolling to a few feet is imprinted on my brain.

Oh dear, look at me, I’ve just ripped off four separate moments from the Masters alone. I said it’s hard to choose. But we’re the bosses here and can make it up as we go. For my actual moment, I will submit the 17th green at Royal Portrush on Sunday with Rory’s chances fully, completely gone thanks to more Scottie brilliance. His caddie, Harry Diamond, a fellow Northern Irishman, lingered having to rake a bunker after Rory had finished the hole. The crowd waited for him to proceed to his 72nd hole. But Rory was not going ahead — he stood there in front of the green for an eternity, waiting for Harry, so that they could walk through the tunnel in their home together to the last tee. I documented the crowd response to Rory a lot that week, almost trying to downplay it and not bite on the narrative. But it was impossible to ignore, and watching McIlroy want to soak it in with Diamond one last time was noteworthy. He was playing a major at a course brought back to the rota in large part due to his ascendance and star power. He’d returned home the career slam winner, the burdens of the last 11 years lightened. The “home crowd” response was unique to golf. He stood there forever, staring off, deliberate, waiting for Harry to enjoy it together. That to me symbolized the week for him and was an appropriate cap. As far as his top 10s at a major go, it had to be one of the more gratifying, unforgettable ones.

Will Knights

This answer to a reporter at the Ryder Cup kinda sums up McIlroy’s long, arduous week at Bethpage Black:

Reporter: “How satisfying is it to turn around to someone and say ‘shut the F up’ and stick it to two feet?”

McIlory: “Very fu**ing satisfying.”

Garrett Morrison

It’s the Sunday shot into 15 at the Masters, captured unforgettably by Fried Egg Golf’s own Cameron Hurdus. I’d like to offer something more unexpected, but that’s the one for me. Insane.

Meg Adkins

Back in March, I very much enjoyed how matter-of-fact Rory was when asked a question about how much competitive golf he would play as he ages.

"Absolutely not. I will not play Champions Tour golf. Look, I've said a lot of absolutes in my time that I've walked back, but I do not envision playing Champions Tour golf. Something has went terribly wrong if I have to compete at golf at 50."  

As expected, the Champs Tour catching a stray from Rory is what made waves on social media. But there was another part of his answer, and it will be fascinating to see if he’s singing the same tune a decade from now. If he does, he’ll be in even rarer company than the career Grand Slam club he joined this year.

“I'd like to walk away maybe a little before I should. Put it that way. There's always one more, but that's OK. I think if you can come to terms with that and walk away on your own terms, then that's a good thing."

Joseph LaMagna

We say we’ll never forget certain experiences far more than ends up being true. I probably forget 90% of the scenes I claimed I’ll never forget. That said, there is one golf memory from 2025 that I will truly never forget, and it was standing in the grandstands behind the 18th hole at Royal Portrush on Thursday night as Rory McIlroy finished his opening round of the Open Championship.

Given the breadth and craziness of McIlroy’s long career, I suppose he is numb to the majority of experiences that would overwhelm just about every other human being. Still, I can only imagine how he felt in that moment, walking up the fairway to the thunderous roars of thousands of people who cared about laying eyes on only one golfer that day. It was McIlroy’s first time playing major championship golf in front of a hometown crowd as a career Grand Slam winner and his first hometown appearance since the 2019 Open, a two-day adventure that didn’t go according to plan.

Striding up the final hole on Thursday, McIlroy was 1-under par. As he approached the green, he removed his cap and embraced the cheers of the crowd, allowing himself to take in a moment he could have only dreamed about as a kid. Once he tapped in for par, he acknowledged the crowd and exited the stadium-like infrastructure that surrounded the green. Immediately upon McIlroy's exit from view, the grandstands emptied. The handful of groups who started behind Rory finished their rounds in near darkness and in near silence.

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Kevin Van Valkenburg

Rory McIlroy likes to talk. It is one of his greatest strengths. (No athlete of his caliber has ever been so vulnerable.) It is also one of his intermittent weaknesses. (No athlete of his caliber has ever walked toward the fires of controversy so frequently.) But one of my favorite moments of 2025 came in a rare moment when Rory didn’t have anything to say. It wasn’t the Masters, although his emotional walk from the 18th green to the clubhouse after he holed a birdie putt to defeat Justin Rose in a playoff will certainly be burned in my memory. It came at the Ryder Cup, in the winners' press conference, when journalist Alan Shipnuck asked European captain Luke Donald what Rory’s recent Ryder Cup performances would mean to his legacy. Donald addressed only part of the question, throwing several platitudes Rory’s way, but then he pivoted to a larger message.

“The Ryder Cup weeks are the best weeks of our lives,” Donald said. “Those individual accolades are fun. We want to achieve as much as we can in the game. Rory has achieved so much. His place in history is set. But, those weeks we spend together are the ones we remember the most, and the ones we cherish the most, because of the time we get to spend with each other. We’ll always remember this. We’ll always go down in history. We talk about all the people that came before us, that paved the way for us. Now future generations will talk about this team and what they did, and how they were able to overcome one of the toughest environments in sports. And that’s what Rory gets. That’s what all these other 11 guys get as well.”

I kept glancing at Rory as Donald spoke. Tears were trickling down his face. He kept wiping them away, but they kept coming. Golf is such an individual sport, and you cannot be great unless you are frequently selfish. In particular, you have to be selfish about your time and your approach. But the Ryder Cup offers a rare window into the life Rory McIlroy might have lived if he’d been blessed with soccer or cricket or rugby skills, a life of camaraderie and brotherhood. We will remember 2025 for the barbaric yawp Rory let loose when he became just the sixth winner of the career Grand Slam. There was joy there, and satisfaction, but also an unmistakable sense of relief. He had escaped the burden of great expectations — his own and the world’s.

The Ryder Cup was different. I suspect he will remember the way Shane Lowry and Tommy Fleetwood and Tyrrell Hatton and Luke Donald kept him from coming apart when the crowd did its best to break him, the way Jon Rahm bear-hugged him as he was leaving the press conference dais to celebrate, a reminder that some victories are even sweeter when you realize you don’t have to walk alone to achieve them.