Rory McIlroy vs. Bryson DeChambeau: The Masters showdown golf cannot wait for

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AUGUSTA, Ga. — It’s unclear what anyone has done to deserve this.

Of all endings? This? This colossal collision of plotlines and personalities, of wild opposites and weird outcomes? The gods already smiled upon these parts of central Georgia this week, offering the kind of weather that not even Augusta National members could buy, but now comes a Sunday that can only be described as too good to be true.

A final pairing of Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau will tee off at 2:30 p.m. local time and likely decide the 2025 Masters. McIlroy, at 12-under, leads by two strokes. DeChambeau, at 10-under, is right there.

The rest? It’s hard to particularly care. Ludvig Åberg is back there somewhere. So is Scottie Scheffler.

But this is about McIlroy and DeChambeau, a matchup straight from the ​​folklorist, as if Dan Jenkins jostled loose from the dust to give us one more. McIlroy was seemingly out of this tournament after Thursday’s cover-your-eyes back-nine 39 that included two double-bogeys. He’s since posted back-to-back 66s and, on Saturday, opened birdie-eagle-birdie to erase a two-shot deficit and take control of the leaderboard. He hit a shot into No. 15 that was straight from a painter’s palette. And DeChambeau? Coming off rounds of 69-68-69, he’s again proven that his game can fit Augusta and is on his own wave of momentum. In the span of about 90 minutes on Saturday, he went from within one stroke of McIlroy, to four shots back, to riding three birdies in the final four holes to land a spot in Sunday’s final pairing. His 48-foot birdie putt on Sunday set off a charge so loud that poor Corey Conners, attempting to speak to reporters a few hundred yards away, had to stop and wait.

McIlroy left Augusta’s 18th green Saturday walking through a tunnel of fans telling him this is his year. DeCheambeau walked through the same walkway only 20 minutes later, fans reaching so hard for high-fives that the ropeline barely held.

Who will have the crowd advantage Sunday? Tough call. Polite Augusta National loves Rory McIlroy. Those spending $5,000 in the merchandise building on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Augusta National? That’s Bryson DeChambeau Country. We guess half will be rooting for Rory, half will be pulling for Bryson, and all will be hoping for chaos.

And they will likely get it. This will be a day of no segues. Only bursts of noise.

Bryson DeChambeau is not afraid to play up to the patrons. (Harry How / Getty Images)

The preface is obvious.

Exactly 301 days ago, McIlroy, with his hat pushed up atop his forehead and his hands on his hips, watched a television mounted to the wall of a USGA scoring tent. There was DeChambeau, on the screen, but larger than life. He rolled in a 3-foot, 11-inch putt, leaned back and let out a primal roar. McIlroy, somehow attaining newfound levels of despondency, turned and walked toward the door. He blew the U.S. Open and DeChambeau won it.

That was supposed to be the day McIlroy finally shook the storyline that’s followed him like the longest possible shadow. Instead, he left Pinehurst still looking for both his first major championship win since 2014 and a cloak of invisibility. DeChambeau, meanwhile, celebrated his second U.S. Open and booming approval numbers.

Neither has ever won the Masters. The difference is DeChambeau, at 31, is playing in his eighth and, coming off last year’s T6 finish, looking more and more destined to eventually win here. McIlroy is on his 17th trip and pressed by the pressure of this being the last leg of his would-be career grand slam. He was supposed to win in 2011 but decidedly did not. That final-round 80 was 14 years ago, but has never gone away.

Something will have to give between two men so seemingly unalike.

McIlroy said he plans to continue avoiding his phone or any word from the outside world until the sun sets on Sunday.

DeChambeau said he’ll absolutely be on his phone. “I don’t have a problem with that.”

McIlroy said he’s ready for Sunday’s “rowdy” scene, but won’t engage much with the noise. “I’m just going to have to settle in,” he explained, “and really try to keep myself in my own little bubble and keep my head down.”

DeChambeau does not do bubbles. On Saturday, following a birdie, he stared down a section of patrons to, as he put it later, deliver “a statement, like, you know what — I’m still here.” He said there’s a line to walk when it comes to emotion and he will be on it. “Just reacting and being who I am,” he told reporters Saturday. “You guys can say whatever you want, but I’m just a little different.”

McIlroy left Augusta National on Saturday to spend a quiet evening with his family.

DeChambeau returned to the driving range and pounded balls as a night sky set in, framing an orange moon above.

Augusta National has seen Rory McIlroy come to the Masters 17 times and not yet win. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

For all the difference, the recipe was similar for both this week. Bomb drives, take advantage of the par-5s and putt the bejesus out of the ball. As it stands:

• Rory has hit 27 of 42 fairways. Bryson: 33 of 42

• Rory has hit 37 of 54 greens in regulation. Bryson: 32 of 54

• Rory ranks No. 2 in putting for the week averaging 1.52 per hole. Bryson? He’s No. 1 at 1.41.

Both have played the par-5s at 8-under, respectively. Convention says Sunday might come down to who does what on the par-3s and 4s.

Both of these men will tell us a lot about themselves on Sunday.

DeCheambeau is often still to this day a comic construct of his own character type. But he’s grown more and more in recent years to become someone and something unlike anything else in golf. A Masters victory — his third major, his chance to play YouTube golf in the green jacket, and a thunderclap for LIV Golf — would feel epochal.

And McIlroy? How do you describe someone’s method acting through all imaginable disappointments? The man has been golf’s greatest player of the last 10 years and at the same time its most underachieving. “The Misadventures of McIlroy” has come with a degree of morbid humour that feels overly harsh, even by Irish standards. But a Masters win, at last? Epochal, to say the least.

There isn’t much else left to be said.

(Top photos: Michael Reeves, Harry How / Getty Images)

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