“My battle today was with myself. It wasn’t with anyone else.” For 3,882 days, Rory McIlroy had waited for this exact moment. Winning four majors by the age of 25—joining an exclusive club alongside Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods—the Northern Irishman’s journey was supposed to be easy. Instead, fate dealt him with an unforgiving hand of yearly shortfalls. It was in 2009 that the veteran golfer set foot at the Augusta National Golf Club for the first time, where he ultimately finished with a T-20. The next year, he came back again, only for a missed cut to greet him. The following year? He returned. Again.

From 2011 to 2014, every year, McIlroy would go empty-handed. His results would vary from a T15th in 2011, to a T-40th, a T-25th, and a T-8th in the following years. However, none of that would hit as hard as 2015 and beyond. High off a 2014 US PGA Championship, McIlroy expected the momentum to help him at the Masters next year. A solo-fourth-place finish seemed like he had inched somewhat closer to his goal. However, the drought was far from ending—two missed cuts in 2021 and 2023, with the highest he could reach being a T-5th in 2018.

Between bouts of self-criticism, McIlroy had tried everything: Exposure therapy, books, hypnosis, self-improvement podcasts, and gaining weight. The Athletic‘s Brody Miller described it best: “He physically could not keep living this life of coming so close and failing to reach the mountaintop.” In the end, it wasn’t just the grand efforts, but simple utterances from his four-year-old daughter Poppy from last year that ultimately helped flip the switch in the former number one’s head:

Amid the celebrations, a clip from one of McIlroy’s interviews last year on the ‘I Can Fly’ podcast has been making the rounds lately. On April 18, Golf on CBS also shared an Instagram Reel of the same. Captioned, “Rory carried a piece of Poppy with him every step of the way during his Masters Tournament win. 😊,“ the video showed the 29-time PGA Tour winner revealing, “I went last week to see Butch Harmon for a golf lesson. So I am leaving for the airport, last Wednesday morning, and Poppy said to me, ’Dada, where are you going?’” And I said, ‘I’m going to go for a golf lesson. I’ll be back in a couple of days.’ She goes, ‘But Dada, you already know how to play golf.’ I was like, ‘That is probably the best piece of advice I have gotten in the last three years.

‘I think kids are just, they bring a whole new, people say, perspective, but it’s more so that I think when you start to spend time around young kids, you start to see the world through their eyes again. And it’s so pure, and it’s so innocent, and, you see, all the good in the world, and you get less cynical, which has been a great thing about having a young daughter.'” Now, let’s get to the second advice. Enter McIlroy’s best friend, his best man when he married Erica Stoll in 2017, his caddie who has endured it all, Harry Diamond.

Over the years that saw Mcllroy firing or replacing him, Diamond had held on tightly. And, on Sunday, as McIlroy headed toward the scoring building to collect himself before the playoff, his caddie sheepishly reminded him, “Well, pal, we would have taken this on Monday morning. Look. You would have given your right arm to be in a playoff at the start of the week,” he had further reminded the man standing at the edge of glory.

Triumphing over a rollercoaster day—where the 35-year-old lost his two-stroke overnight lead (thanks to a double bogey on the first hole) and gave up by lead by the third tee, he bounced back with a third and fourth hole birdie. By the end of the ninth, McIlroy already held a strong four-stroke lead. And then, of course, we know how it went. The veteran sank a 4-foot birdie putt on the first hole of a sudden-death playoff to clinch an iconic career Grand Slam.

For now, though, Poppy’s incident seems to have taken over fans’ hearts, who didn’t wait to talk about in on social media…

Golf fans are smitten with Rory McIlroy’s daughter’s advice!

One social media fan endearingly wrote, “Dada does in fact already know how to play golf”, while someone else commented, “the cutest thing we have seen all day.”

McIlroy and his wife Erica Stoll had their daughter in 2020, and since then, she has been getting her share of attention at her father’s golf tournaments, especially during the annual Par 3 Contest at the Masters each year. But did you know that the couple successfully hid the news about Stoll’s pregnancy until the last minute?

Back then, the golfer confirmed the news in a post-round interview that they were expecting “any day now”. “We’re about to be parents very soon, so we’re obviously super excited. Yeah, we’ve been sharing the news with friends and family, obviously, but I didn’t think it was something that I really particularly needed to share out here,” he had stated. But ever since they had Poppy, golf fans have seen her make several appearances with her parents, and so fans wrote on Instagram, “She is her dad’s #1 fan,” and “Facts, Poppy straight facts.”

During the Masters Tournament, Poppy did have a moment of magic. It was at the par-3 tournament, and Rory McIlroy gave his daughter a putt from a decent distance. She placed a slight strike on the ball, only for it to look like it was stopping midway before gathering momentum and rolling into the pin. Both Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry leapt in celebration! When the ball fell in the hole, Lowry’s daughter ran in to congratulate the young Poppy McIlroy, who stood unfazed.

An amazing putt, which means that she is likely to be following in her father’s footsteps soon. And what better role model than her father himself? It was with this in mind that one fan commented, “She doesn’t know it yet, but seeing you still take lessons is amazing advice for her, too.”

What do you think of Poppy McIlroy’s advice to Rory? Does it hit all the right notes?