Penton: After Masters’ win, McIlroy eyes the ‘Calendar Slam’
By Bruce Penton
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.
But winning all four in a single year? Impossible? Probably, but there is currently only one golfer with a chance to accomplish that feat in 2025 and it’s McIlroy, enjoying by far the most successful start to a season in his career.
He won the AT&T Pebble Beach pro-am in January. He won the prestigious Players championship in a playoff over J.J. Spaun in March. He overcame the scar tissue from a number of near misses at Augusta to finally cash in this year, beating Justin Rose in a one-hole playoff. “Every time he made a mistake, he came back and did something fantastic,” Dr. Bob Rotella, McIlroy’s sports psychologist, said in an interview..
And what’s next? Three major championship venues at which McIlroy will be one of the strong favourites at each one. So why not win all four and make golf history?
First up is the PGA in May at Quail Hollow in Charlotte, N.C. It’s one of McIlroy’s favourite courses and a site where he already has won four times. In June, the U.S. Open will be staged at Oakmont in suburban Pittsburgh and that will present a strong challenge to McIlroy’s hopes of winning. He missed the cut nine years ago when the Open was last played at Oakmont but his game is much better now.
The Grand Slam pressure would be immense if McIlroy happened to pull off wins at Quail Hollow and Oakmont, but it would be ultra intense at July’s Open Championship, which this year is being played at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland, almost in Rory’s backyard. British bookmakers have already established odds — 80-to-1 — against McIlroy winning what they’re calling the Calendar Slam.
With the Masters monkey off his back, and clearly the best player in the world (even though Scottie Scheffler’s numerical ranking, mainly based on 2024 results, is better), McIlroy can approach the season’s final three majors with relative calm. Skill-wise, he has what it takes. Mentally, though … well, that’s a dragon of a different roar and hotter fire.
New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick, who regularly laments that a certain ex-pitcher, now a TV analyst, talks too much: “Had a horrible nightmare. I was at a banquet, and John Smoltz was the after-dinner speaker.”
A gem from long-time college basketball coach Al McGuire, snipped from Jack Finarelli’s sportscurmudgeon.com site: “I think everyone should go to college and get a degree and then spend six months as a bartender and six months as a cabdriver. Then they would really be educated.”
Comedy guy Torben Rolfsen of Vancouver: “Eminem has joined a group of investors trying to bring a WNBA team back to Detroit, with one stipulation: The team uniforms must include a hood.”
Another one from Torben Rolfsen: “The NHL is already regretting switching the draft to Zoom this spring. All because a few GMs didn't want to have to wear pants.”
Retiring CBS reporter Dennis Dodd, reminiscing in his retirement column: “Fun fact: The antacid still hasn't been invented to combat the effects of press box food.”
Headline at The Beaverton.com: “Federal election postponed until all Canadian teams eliminated from playoffs.”
Janice Hough of leftcoastsportsbabe.com: “I’m so old I remember when an 82-game season that allowed 16 of 30 teams into the NBA postseason was considered enough of a ‘play-in round.’”
Bob Molinaro of pilotonline.com (Hampton, Va.): “Will or won’t the Giants take Shedeur Sanders with the third overall pick? Who knows? This is a franchise that passed in 2018 on Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson.”
From Miami columnist Dave Barry, via Jack Finarelli’s sportscurmudgeon.com site: “Camping is nature’s way of promoting the motel business.”
Headline at fark.com: “A whole lotta people enjoyed watching McIlroy constantly switching between ‘It’s so over’ and ‘We’re so back’ (during the Masters’ final round).”
Care to comment? Email brucepenton2003@yahoo.ca