After Masters’ win, McIlroy eyes the ‘calendar slam’

April 24, 2025

key points from this story:

• McIlroy completes career grand slam at Masters
• First Masters win after years of close calls
• Now targets all four majors in 2025
• No golfer has won all four in one year
• Upcoming majors favor McIlroy’s strengths
• Pressure and expectations remain immense

Now that he’s slain one dragon, how about a more ferocious, fire-breathing beast to conquer for Rory McIlroy? Finally achieving professional golf’s career grand slam by winning the 2025 Masters, McIlroy can breathe easily when he returns to Augusta in 2026. For the rest of this season, the Northern Ireland golf phenom, still relatively young at 35, can go after the unthinkable — the single-season grand slam. No one has ever pulled off the rarest of the rare — winning the Masters, PGA, U.S. Open and the Open Championship in the same season. Why not Rory in 2025? The great amateur from 100 years ago, Bobby Jones, is credited with accomplishing the Grand Slam, but that included the U.S. and British Amateurs in 1930, and the U.S. and British Opens. Tiger Woods came close, at one point in 2001 holding all four major golf trophies, but they weren’t all won in a single calendar year. He won the final three majors of 2000 and then won the 2001 Masters.