Why Rory McIlroy’s 7-iron is missing after winning the Masters

In this week’s 2026 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Rory McIlroy makes his PGA Tour debut of the year. But at his pre-tournament press conference on Tuesday, it was the story of McIlroy’s 2025 Masters win that caught this writer’s attention.

It turns out that when McIlroy arrived home on Monday after the Masters, the “most important club” was suddenly missing from his golf bag. A criminal may be very surprised: Augusta National.

Here’s what you need to know.

Rory shares the story of the Masters club missing before the start of the PGA Tour

This week is not McIlroy’s first tournament of the season. As he usually does, the World No. 2 began his year on the DP World Tour, playing two tournaments in the Middle East.

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

That debut led to a victory and sparked a run that included winning the Players Championship and, soon after, the Masters.

McIlroy’s Masters win was memorable for many reasons, none other than the fact that McIlroy became just the sixth golfer to complete a career Grand Slam.

But when McIlroy arrived home following his stunning victory, he looked in his golf bag to find that one of the 14 clubs he had won was missing.

“I didn’t see this, but I flew back the next day on Monday and I didn’t see my golf clubs as I just got the playoff and I saw that my 7-iron was missing,” McIlroy said Tuesday at Pebble Beach. “I would say, that is a very important club.”

So where was the trusty, 7-iron winner of the Masters? Turns out it never got on the plane.

Augusta National has a tradition of keeping one key club from a memorable Masters victory on display in the clubhouse. Given McIlroy’s history of victories, club officials wanted something to remember the tournament by.

McIlroy’s manager Sean O’Flaherty obliged, giving Augusta the 7-iron McIlroy used during his victory.

One problem: you forgot to tell Rory,

“Sean had already given it to the club, he didn’t tell me,” McIlroy said on Tuesday. “Okay, I’m going to get a new 7 iron. If there was anything I would give to the club, it would probably be that one.”

McIlroy confirmed that he should have found a successor at his next event, the Zurich Classic in 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’ from a Masters win

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 major champion admitted as much in his Pebble Beach press conference.

“If I had criticized myself last year that I did not bring the situation that maybe I would have wanted a Masters position,” he said on Tuesday.

And improving his consistency, he said, is the only chance he has to replace the World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler at the world level.

“I think anyone who wants to catch Scottie [Scheffler] or getting close he’s going to have to deliver that kind of game every week like he does,” McIlroy said. “He’s really the first since Tiger to do this.”

While Rory admitted he was “going to Jim Nantz later” for an interview wearing his Masters green jacket, he said he is finally ready to move on from his historic victory and focus on building on his many accomplishments this year.

“It’s done, it’s great, I’m glad it’s over in a way,” McIlroy said of his 2025 Masters win, “but I want to move forward and I’ve got a lot of goals and there’s a lot of things I want to try and achieve.”

Step 1? He defends his title this week at Pebble Beach.