Rory McIlroy during a Masters playoff. Rory McIlroy walks the fairway during a 2025 Masters playoff. (Kyle Terada/Imagn Images.)
By Andrew Bucholtz on

Sunday’s final round of the Masters set up as a day with a lot of focus on Rory McIlroy. McIlroy, who needed only a Masters win for a career Grand Slam, entered the day with his first lead after three rounds of a major since 2014. And CBS was understandably focused on him throughout, which led to them capturing an amazing array of great successes and crushing failures. Here’s how that finally ended, with McIlroy’s birdie putt on the first hole of a sudden-death playoff to beat Justin Rose producing a “McIlroy has his masterpiece” call from announcer Jim Nantz:

But we only got to that playoff thanks to McIlroy missing a par putt from six feet on 18, which led to announcers Nantz, Trevor Immelman, and Dottie Pepper just staying silent until he tapped in for bogey:

And that did come with a bit of a graphic jinx:

There were some higher points for McIlroy before that. That included “The shot of a lifetime,” as Nantz described McIlroy’s fairway shot on the 15th hole:

Another notable broadcast moment came on the 17th, where CBS captured audio of McIlroy yelling for his shot to go (which it did do):

McIlroy’s spectacular successes and failures made for quite the final round, and CBS was all over every part of his roller coaster round.

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

View all posts by Andrew Bucholtz