The Break: Rory wins the Irish Open in dramatic fashion

With a 28-foot eagle on the 72nd hole, McIlroy forced a playoff he eventually won for his 2nd Irish Open.

Author

Ryan Ballengee
September 08, 2025

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Rory is A-O-K (Club)

Rory McIlroy invigorated the golf world on Sunday when he completed his final-round charge at the Amgen Irish Open with a 28-foot eagle putt to force a playoff at The K Club against Joakim Lagergren, who had birdied the final hole in the group in front of the Ulsterman and had won on the DP World Tour’s feeder circuit, the HotelPlanner Tour, at this same venue a year prior.

On the third time of playing the same par-5 finisher in the playoff, Lagergren pulled his second shot just into the hazard left of the green. McIlroy, playing from the rough, wisely found the fat of the green on the right and impressively two-putted for birdie from 55 feet. Lagergren had to make his greenside chip after dropping, and he couldn’t do it.

McIlroy is now a two-time Irish Open winner at The K Club.

Post-Masters win, McIlroy in 2025 has been mostly in a strange funk. While so many expected McIlroy to turn up the intensity knowing an 11-year weight had been lifted, the exact opposite happened. McIlroy got moody — with the press and about his life as a career Grand Slam winner — as he was seemingly caught between celebrating what he waited so long to achieve (a Masters win and check off the last major box) and trying to find a new mountain to climb.

However, there have been times along the way when it has seemed McIlroy was clearly motivated to perform at his best. The two most important of those instances were in front of home crowds at Royal Portrush and The K Club. McIlroy reveled in the home-hero treatment he got at both events, and he reciprocated with his best efforts. He soaked up the adulation of his Irish fans, and he talked at both events about not taking their support for granted. Being cheered in your home country has to hit differently than your adopted home country.

The game didn’t go anywhere. It’s still in there. He hit mammoth drives on Sunday, and that final eagle putt in regulation was never going anywhere but in the center with make speed. Now, he goes to Wentworth for the BMW PGA Championship in an event which he lost in a playoff to Billy Horschel last year, as another tune up for the Ryder Cup. McIlroy has said repeatedly that winning a Ryder Cup on American soil is as animating of a motivation as he now has left. That could be enough to put a capstone on a career year with an inspiring September run. If that’s the case, we could be in store for a Ryder Cup that bucks the trend of host-team routs and gives up an all-timer.

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The Korn Ferry Tour Finals starts this week in Nashville with the Simmons Bank Open, and we get you ready for the four-event series on The Road to French Lick.

The PGA Tour — including 10 US Ryder Cup team members — kicks off the FedEx Cup Fall at the Procore Championship out in California wine country.

The LPGA Tour is in the Queen City for the Kroger Queen City Championship in Cincy, with a major-caliber field competing this week.

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What a Walker Cup

I hope you got a chance to watch some of the Walker Cup this weekend from Cypress Point Club out in Pebble Beach. If nothing else, a chance to watch Cypress Point on TV, in all its glory (including the Sunday fog layer rolling in, was a great treat. But the quality of golf between the US and GB&I teams was tremendous.

Cypress Point is a completely different test than most people expect when they watch golf on TV. For one, Cypress Point is short by modern standards, playing to 6,620 yards. The targets are small and require so much care and precision. Both teams met the gauntlet thrown down and played some spectacular golf — some measured and reserved against modern power-am implulses and some pure brute force. There was frustration, happiness, camaraderie and a feeling that we were seeing some bright futures taking shape.

The 17-9 end result somewhat belied the quality of the matches. Then again, in the final 10-match singles session on Sunday, the US won eight matches, tied one and lost one. The finale turned an otherwise close competition — to that point, eight singles mathes and eight foursomes matches — into a laugher.

Through 50 Walker Cups, the United States carries a 40-9-1 record. The US has won five in a row and six out of seven. Two of the wins (this one and a 19-7 win in 2017 at Los Angeles Country Club) were complete runaways.

It might be time to include continental Europe in the Walker Cup. Looking at the two teams on paper this time around, the US had seven of the world top 10 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings, while the GB&I side had just one. Inviting the rest of Europe to the party would have netted three players inside the top 30 in the ranking that weren’t already playing for GB&I, and maybe that would have been enough to stem the American tide.

Either way, this is about as good as it gets in team match play, with the Walker Cup going to Lahinch in Ireland next year to get the series back on even-numbered years. With Chicago Golf Club, Oakmont and Pine Valley in the announced American rotation, the Walker Cup offers a view of some of the most exclusive clubs in this country while showcasing just how deep talent runs in the sport.