Augusta National’s best new tradition returns with Rory McIlroy
One of the best ways that tour companies and broadcasters can get golf fans hooked all the way in it’s very simple. We’ve given you great golfers who destroy everything. Not just pretty pictures. Not just those that fall into the jar. Everything.
We want to hear the way to play a certain hole. Thoughts that stand on a certain image with certain lies. Feelings of pleasure kicking in their head during tense moments. It’s not just, “What does this win mean?” That’s right How the hell did you do it… but you probably don’t?
Developers making golf content aren’t forced to do any of this, although the smartest ones do. They are breaking away from the status quo with the thought that, What are the fans hungry for? And they bring in the likes of the Masters’ Every Hole With series, which aired its second installment on Friday, and defending champion Rory McIlroy.
Augusta National kicked off the series in 2025 with Scottie Scheffler birdying every hole on the famous course. A fun game in the Golf Digest series created over the years, it explains everything you need to know, holes 1 to 18, on famous courses around the world.
Where McIlroy’s video differs from Scheffler’s, McIlroy ended up hole-in-one for his final round of 2025, rather than simply describing the holes in general. That will happen after your great success at work. It also makes sense for Scheffler to be more casual in his comments, given that he has won the tournament twice in the past three years, in a dominant fashion. He has played twice as many reasonable Masters holes as McIlroy in recent years but has never seemed to struggle with the rigors of that course in times of victory or defeat.
With that special treatment from McIlroy, you learn a a lot here on the eve of Masters week. He learns the simple things, like why he finally picked a driver on the 3rd hole rather than a layup like Bryson DeChambeau. Not that he needed a bird. That he felt more comfortable with a second shot behind the driver than a full shot after the sleeper.
He learns where the pins are, year after year, McIlroy is a little nervous, emphasizing the fact that – after enough Masters starts – there is scar tissue. all over in that lesson, even in small ways. You learn about how well-placed most of Augusta National’s bunkers are — at 1, 2, 3, 5 and 8, for example, among the game’s tallest players.
He learns which one shot – more than an hour into the final round – finally allowed McIlroy to settle down and feel comfortable. The fact that it all comes with exclusive, very beautiful drone images is the icing on the cake.
You know there is a special walk on that course – from the clubhouse to the 1st, from the 17th green to the 18th tee, or the 16th tee to the 16th green. But you learn what McIlroy thinks he has on the second tee, after a trip to the 1st tee.
These revelations aren’t world-shaking, but they do reveal more about how certain players perceive certain parts of this specific area. It’s the same place everyone is trying to get a little bit more each year. It’s the most exciting version of our annual quest to find the truth in the never-ending quest for Masters.
Watching McIlroy’s round, shot, and feeling what he wanted to do with each swing, only—at times—to be at the mercy of gravity, the dunes and the grass, was a reminder of the luck involved in the game. McIlroy’s ball careened through the branches of the trees toward the green and rolled over the dunes toward the hazards, all the while making the best swing of this lifetime.
The biggest moment, perhaps, came on the 15th hole, when he pulled a 7-iron. But he learns that DeChambeau’s move made McIlroy do things differently than he intended. It all brings us a little closer to McIlroy himself, to his victory. It’s hard to overdo it at this time of year, in Masters content. Especially when it’s this good.
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