Rory McIlroy’s Masters win was a ‘horrific, excruciating pleasure’

There’s a fair chance that most - very probably all - of those who tuned in to that final round at Augusta would concur with Malachy Clerkin’s sentiment: “What a horrific, excruciating pleasure it was to watch him as he went,” he says of the man who won the Masters “in the most Rory McIlroy way possible”. “He drove terribly and putted like he was holding a garden rake and still he won. How? He hit “some of the best shots of his life”.

Some of the worst ones too, says David Gorman in his five takes from McIlroy’s triumph, but “his brilliantly flawed game compelled to the end and his resilience knows no bounds”.

Philip Reid takes us through that final, spellbinding day at Augusta. He has been covering the Masters since 1991, when there wasn’t a single Irish player in the field, Irish golf coming a long way since then. “What we got was one of the truly great sporting occasions, a day of giddy highs and gut-punching pain,” he writes, “this win for McIlroy stands unmatched.”

Denis Walsh suspects sports psychologist Bob Rotella played no small part in helping McIlroy cope with “the self-sabotage and the raging doubts” that blighted him before. “They didn’t leave him; he accepted them.” It wasn’t about eliminating them, it was about “about finding an accommodation”.

Have your say: Who is the greatest Irish sports star of them all?

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In rugby, Gerry Thornley has his own doubts about how well the Champions Cup is being run, structural flaws and the apathy of English clubs, bar Northampton, doing the competition no favours. Nor are 7-1 bench splits doing rugby any good either, Owen Doyle strongly believing they are against the spirit of the game and should be addressed at World Rugby’s meeting in May.

Ahead of Ireland’s Six Nations game against Wales on Sunday, Gerry talks to backrow Aoife Wafer, while Daire Walsh hears from Leinster’s Joe McCarthy whose focus is very much switched back to provincial rugby after the disappointing end to Ireland’s Six Nations campaign.

In Gaelic Games, our crew pick out ‘Five Things We Learned’ from last weekend’s games, while Conor McManus gives his thoughts on the shape Tyrone are in after their win over Cavan at the weekend - he also looks ahead to Monaghan’s Ulster quarter-final meeting with Donegal next Sunday.

And Ian also has decidedly good news for Clare hurling devotees - Shane O’Donnell, the 2024 Hurler of the Year, expects to be back “to full contact hurling” in four to eight weeks, when surgery on his right shoulder looked set to rule him out of the game for six months.

TV Watch: Virgin Media One has racing from Newmarket today, their coverage starting at 1.30, and this evening we have the second legs of two Champions League quarter-finals - Aston Villa v PSG (Premier Sports 1), PSG leading 3-1 from the first leg, and Borussia Dortmund v Barcelona Virgin (Media Two & TNT Sports 1), Dortmund with a 4-0 deficit to overturn. Both games start at 8pm.