‘Pretty important club’: why Rory McIlroy’s 7-iron disappeared after Masters victory

This week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am 2026 sees Rory McIlroy make his first PGA Tour start of the year. But at his pre-tournament press conference on Tuesday, it was an anecdote about McIlroy’s 2025 Masters win that caught this writer’s attention.

It turns out that when McIlroy returned home from the Masters on Monday, a “pretty important club” was unexpectedly missing from his golf bag. The perpetrator may come as more of a surprise: Augusta National.

Here’s what you need to know.

Rory shares missing Masters club story ahead of PGA Tour debut

This week is not McIlroy’s first tournament of the season. As he usually does, the world number 2 started his year with the DP World Tour, playing two tournaments in the Middle East.

In his very first start, he finished T3 at the Dubai Invitational. But now McIlroy is ready to get his PGA Tour season underway, and he’s doing it in the same place he debuted last year: Pebble Beach.

That debut resulted in a victory and sparked a run that included wins at the Players Championship and, shortly thereafter, the Masters.

McIlroy’s Masters victory was memorable for many reasons, especially the fact that it made McIlroy only the sixth golfer to complete a career Grand Slam.

But when McIlroy returned home after his dramatic victory, he looked in his golf bag and discovered that one of the fourteen clubs that gave him the victory was missing.

“I didn’t know this, but I flew back the next day on Monday and I actually haven’t seen my golf clubs since just after the playoff and I noticed my 7-iron was missing,” McIlroy said Tuesday at Pebble Beach. “I thought: that’s a pretty important club.”

So where was his trusty, Masters-winning 7-iron? It turns out it never made it onto the plane.

Augusta National has a tradition of displaying one essential club of memorable Masters victories in the clubhouse. Given the historic nature of McIlroy’s win, club officials wanted something to commemorate the tournament with.

McIlroy’s manager Sean O’Flaherty agreed and gave Augusta the 7-iron that McIlroy used during his win.

One problem: he forgot to tell Rory:

“Sean had already given it to the club, he just didn’t tell me,” McIlroy revealed on Tuesday. “That’s fine, I’ll get a new 7 iron. If I were to give one to the club it would probably be this one.”

McIlroy confirmed he had to find a replacement for his next start, the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, where he and Shane Lowry finished T12 a year after winning. In his next tournament, McIlroy had a T7 finish at the Truist Championship.

McIlroy wants to ‘move on’ after the Masters victory

McIlroy’s 2025 Masters victory was his third of the season at the time. Although he collected four more top-10 finishes, he did not win another Tour event in 2025.

The five-time champion acknowledged this at his press conference in Pebble Beach.

“If I had any criticism of myself last year, it was that I didn’t bring the consistency that I might have wanted after the Masters,” he said on Tuesday.

And improving his consistency, he argued, is the only chance he has of displacing world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler in the world rankings.

“I think everyone wants to get Scottie [Scheffler] or anywhere close, is going to have to put out those types of games consistently week in and week out like he does,” McIlroy said. “He’s really the first since Tiger to do this.”

While Rory admitted that he “went over to Jim Nantz’s house later” to do an interview in his green Masters jacket, he said that ultimately he is ready to move on from his historic victory and focus on achieving even more achievements this year.

“It’s done, it’s great, I’m glad it’s over in a way,” McIlroy said of his 2025 Masters victory, “but I want to move on and I have more goals and there’s more things I want to try to achieve and achieve.”

Step No. 1? He will defend his title this week at Pebble Beach.