Rory McIlroy sunk the final putt to become the 2025 Masters champion and was quickly greeted by close friend Shane Lowry. Yet, the two Irish golf aces have not always been on the best of terms.
The pair, who had a rocky past, shared an emotional embrace that nearly brought McIlroy to tears after he edged out Justin Rose in a playoff to claim his first Major since 2014 and complete the career Grand Slam. Lowry, who finished T42 on four over par after a tough weekend, patiently waited for McIlroy as he navigated through the excited crowd and past Masters winners donning their iconic green jackets.
This touching scene was a far cry from 2013 when the two Irish golfers weren’t even speaking following a significant rift. The root of their disagreement, as McIlroy admitted in 2022, was financial.
Back then, both were clients of Horizon Sports agency, but McIlroy decided to part ways with the company, leading to a messy and awkward situation. The rift is now firmly behind them, as was evident in Lowry’s authentic joy for McIlroy.
Yet, there was a time when the pair were not seeing eye-to-eye, despite their friendship stretching back to their childhood. McIlroy described the evolution of their relationship in an interview with the Irish Independent. He said: “I would say very close early on, not-so-close in the middle, and closer than ever now.
“We were being managed by the same person [Conor Ridge], in the same agency [Horizon Sports]. Then I had a fall-out with Horizon in 2013, it got a bit messy for a couple of years, not because one of us had done wrong to the other, but because of the circumstances.”
The rift was eventually healed in Belfast shortly after Lowry’s triumph at the 2015 Bridgestone Invitational. Reflecting on the moment they put their differences aside, McIlroy added: “Shane won in Akron and I reached out to him. The BBC Sports Personality of the Year was in Belfast that year, and we went for a few drinks afterwards and had a really good chat.
“So it’s really nice since he started playing here that we’ve got close again. Erica and Wendy [Shane’s wife] get on great, and our kids are a similar age. It’s all good.”
When asked about the root cause of their disagreement, McIlroy candidly replied: “Do you know what it was over? Money, exactly. It’s the root of all evil.”
Fast forward to the present, and Lowry and McIlroy’s friendship is now more robust than ever, as evident in their celebratory embrace at Augusta. Despite Lowry’s own disappointing final round, his genuine delight for McIlroy’s success was palpable.
This display of camaraderie came as no surprise to viewers of Netflix’s popular golf series ‘Full Swing’. In one episode, when asked if he felt protective of McIlroy, Lowry confessed: “Nobody’s ever asked me that. But now that you say it, I probably would do, yeah.
“He gets a lot of unnecessary criticism from the general public, the golf media, the other players. Stuff like that can weigh heavily on people. I just feel like he gets a lot of s***. When you’re Rory McIlroy and you’re the greatest player of our generation, people are not themselves around you.
“So you meet people, you go hang out with them, and they’re not themselves. But when I hang out with him, I’m just myself. I think I’m probably a breath of fresh air to his life at times where he can just get away, be himself and be normal. I feel like I’m good for him – but he’s also really good for me as well.”
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