PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – There’s a warning sign on the 18th tee box at Pebble Beach that can also serve as course advice.
“NO SITTING ON THE FENCE.”
The genius of Pebble beach exists in the extremes. Jagged rocks and ominous surf and enormous dunes and small greenery. Of the many skills needed to thrive here, decisiveness is perhaps the most important. There will be no fence sitting on the 18th tee box and at the winners party on the 18th green.
Rory McIlroy knows this better than most. Anyone with a little golf in their soul understood what McIlroy meant last February when he suggested that winning for the first time at Pebble Beach meant something more.
“There are a few that I would call golf cathedrals,” McIlroy said at the time. “Here, Augusta, St. Andrews – maybe you can add a few more. I had a big zero for everyone who went in here. It’s very cool to knock one off at Pebble.”
Of course, anyone with a little golf in their soul also knows what happened after that victory at Pebble Beach: a third career victory at the Players Championship, and then a career-altering, sports-rattling, Grand Slam clinching victory at the Masters.
When the books are written, that last win at Augusta will be remembered as the one that kicked down the door for McIlroy. But it can be said that he First The 2025 win, at Pebble Beach, was the one that broke the lock.
“I’m a great historian of the game and I remember all the championships that were played here,” McIlroy said then, eerily foreshadowing the history he would soon create at Augusta. “And to add my name to that list is pretty cool.”
Now, in 2026, the historian has been returned to the library. With no more major championships to capture and no more Ryder Cups to win on the road, McIlroy has been forced to reset his goals. And in doing so he has had the chance to face a new question: Which “cathedrals” come next?
On Friday at Pebble Beach, the same day McIlroy shot five under to get into contention heading into the weekend, the Grand Slam winner was asked the question himself for the first time.
“There are places I haven’t won yet that I would like to win,” McIlroy said. “St. Andrews is one of them. Riviera would be another next week. Riviera and Muirfield Village are two. They’re beautiful courses, but they also host the events. You know, Tiger and Jack. I was able to win Bay Hill, but not when Arnie was there, so it would be nice to win both tournaments while both guys are still alive.”
And perhaps the biggest standout win on McIlroy’s list? Only the most elusive major championship venue in sports: the home of golf.
“There are a lot of golf courses with a lot of history. There are a lot of old U.S. Open sites where great things have happened,” McIlroy said. “Yes, this is definitely one, Augusta was another, and the last one I think – not the last, but the biggest on the list would probably be St. Andrews.”
McIlroy will likely get at least one more chance to score a big win on the Old Course in the prime of his playing career. That will happen in 2027, when the golf world returns to St. Andrews for the 155th Open shortly after his 38th birthday.
These are champagne aspirations, of course, but it would be foolish to dismiss them as insignificant. As McIlroy learned at Pebble Beach last February (and again at Augusta National in April), breakthroughs often come in multiples.
And when it comes to picking his spots? Well, McIlroy certainly isn’t sitting on the fence.
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