Revealed: The essential textual content message and provoking dialog that rocket-fuelled Rory McIlroy’s outstanding restoration from first-round jitters to Masters glory at Augusta

After watching Rory McIlroy emerge in green from the most chaotic and cathartic evening of his professional life, the man responsible for his mind was struggling somewhat to gain control of his own.

‘Wonderful,’ Dr Bob Rotella told Mail Sport a couple of hours after that final four-footer disappeared beneath the ground.

‘Wonderful and perfect,’ he added. ‘That was intense. It brought tears to my eyes because it was so human to want something that badly. Wonderful. And what else is there to say?’

Well, quite. And quite a lot, too. There might not be a moment in the sporting year that touches on what McIlroy achieved in the completion of his masterpiece. Nor the utter madness of his final steps in that quest.

McIlroy’s entire career was distilled into one five-hour excoriation of the soul – he lost the Masters three times during that adventure between the Georgia pines and three times he won it back. When the music finally stopped, so too did that question of whether he was the right fit for a jacket and elevation to his sport’s list of all-time greats.

Much of it might be traced to a text message on Thursday and a hug on Friday morning. These can seem like tangential details, but with McIlroy it has always been as much about the inches between his ears as the 360 yards he can cover with a driver.

Into that smaller space, there was potential for hell to break loose after what happened at the end of his first round, when 16 good holes were hugely overshadowed by double bogeys in two of his final four. After McIlroy left the course in a clear state of anger, refusing all interviews, Rotella stepped in.

‘Thursday was a really big thing,’ Rotella said. ‘We have spoken a lot about resilience and how you come back from disappointment. It is an area we talk about all of the time. What happened in his first round was always going to be an example of that.

‘I texted him to get some sleep and we would speak in the morning.’

That conversation happened in a spare room of the caddie building at the end of the driving range at Augusta National.

‘I saw him and gave him a bear hug,’ Rotella said.

‘The first thing I mentioned was, “You cannot let two holes define how you view the round”. We spoke about how good he had been. The shots that he went for and worked out. He was actually upbeat – he knew he was playing well. But he was heartbroken by the mistakes so the emphasis is to look at what had gone well.

‘The second thing we spoke about was comebacks. The greatest stories we tell in sport are the comebacks. I told him, “It was time for a gut check”, as we call it here. How resilient are you? Am I strong enough to go out there again and be ready for the test?

‘I said to him, “You have to have a steel will, be unbreakable, because this game can rip out your heart”. I think he enjoys those moments, those tests. He showed what he has on Friday.’

Friday feels a while ago now but that bounce-back round of 66 was the sharpest turning point of the week.

It was McIlroy at his most devastating, on the charge, and with a constant wrestling match in his mind on where to draw the line between adventure and recklessness.

Consider his later recollection of his thoughts immediately after letting fly on the 13th hole of that second round, when he took on the par-five in two from 220 yards and a pine-straw lie, carrying the creek and setting up an eagle. He branded himself an ‘idiot’ when the ball was in the air but he was determined to not fear ‘heartbreak’.

That was a theme of his week and has been part of his conversations with Rotella for the better part of their three years together.

‘It takes someone special to put that much on the line like he does,’ Rotella said. ‘Are you willing to be heartbroken?’

After 16 unsuccessful trips to Augusta and 11 years without a major, McIlroy has visited this point frequently. It feeds into the single biggest improvement within his game, going beyond significant strides made with shots from 150 yards and less since the 2023 US Open – the ability to move on from a mistake. To achieve ‘instant amnesia’, as Rotella calls it.

According to members of McIlroy’s inner circle, that is an aspect specifically modelled on Scottie Scheffler, the world No 1 who would go on to cloak on the Northern Irishman in his new green jacket on Sunday.

‘Rory’s resilience is super impressive,’ Rotella said, and Sunday’s round was both proof of the argument, as well as evidence of how much running maintenance is needed on his psyche.

We can run through the major staging points in order. That double bogey on the first was a shambolic start, immediately allowing Bryson DeChambeau to wipe out his two-shot lead in the space of a hole. By the second, DeChambeau was ahead.

But it is telling that McIlroy, who once would have descended into a vortex of doom thoughts, instead had an instant recollection of Jon Rahm doing the same on the opening hole before winning here in 2023. ‘Rory has been very good at visualisation,’ Rotella said. ‘He spent a lot of time on the way to this point asking what he would do in worst-case scenarios.’

In this one, his rebound was to birdie the third and fourth holes. DeChambeau, meanwhile, went the other way and was suffering in silence – McIlroy was making a point of not saying a word to him during their round.

Their dynamic is fascinating, with DeChambeau having profited from McIlroy’s US Open choke last summer, and the latter saying towards the end of the season that he was desperate for a rematch. Their early holes together on Sunday felt like a personal score being up for grabs.

But as we all saw, McIlroy would also have to fight himself. After turning for the back nine with a four-shot lead, he capitulated with a double-bogey via a duffed chip on 13. With Rose and Ludvig Aberg now turning the tournament into a wild free-for-all, McIlroy replied with the shot of the championship when he launched the most incredible hook around the trees at the 15th hole to set up and eagle putt. A birdie on the 17th effectively gave him match point.

‘Every setback, he had an answer,’ Rotella said, which followed on when McIlroy failed to secure the par needed to win on the 18th, before he held his nerve in the play-off on the same hole. Unlike St Andrews in 2022 and the US Opens of 2023 and 2024, there were enough right answers to outweigh the wrong ones.

‘My battle today was with myself,’ McIlroy said to us afterwards. ‘It was with my mind. It was a struggle, but I got it over the line.’

Rotella played his part in that, as did McIlroy’s often maligned caddie Harry Diamond, his childhood mate, who intervened on the buggy ride to the play-off to stop anything harmful spreading after the six-footer for the win on 18th had stayed up.

McIlroy recalled: ‘After scoring, Harry and I were walking to the golf cart to bring us back to the 18th tee, and he said to me, “Well, pal, we would have taken this on Monday morning”. I’m like, “Yeah, absolutely we would have”. That was an easy reset.’

The outcome was one of the most thrilling ends to one career-long saga and the onset of another question: now that he has five majors and is free of so many demons, what comes next?

In the immediate sense, the second major stop of the year is Quail Hollow for the US PGA Championship in May. McIlroy has won there four times.

Rotella is excited by the possibilities. ‘I think we all are,’ he said. ‘I like his chances of moving on well from this.

‘He is unbelievably honest and one of the things we often talk about is potential. What can you do if you really face the challenge of getting it? How much can you achieve by going for things that other people give up on after a certain amount of heartbreak? Rory can achieve a lot.’

He already has and never more so than on a mad Sunday at Augusta. That was a sporting triumph for the ages and one that aged anyone fortunate to witness it.