Winning the Masters back-to-back would be the highlight of most golfers’ careers, but Rory McIlroy wasn’t ready to call it a perfect season. When players were asked to grade their 2026 seasons at the TOUR Championship, McIlroy gave himself an A, a notch below the A+ that both Gary Woodland and Wyndham Clark awarded themselves. It was a modest verdict from a player who had just delivered one of the biggest wins in golf.

He reasons that a major win earns the credit. “ I would grade my season as an A, maybe not an A+, but I think any season that you win a major championship you have to, you know, have to give yourself an A,” McIlroy said. 

But he stopped short of giving himself the highest grade. That is surprising because he had won the Masters for the second year in a row. With that win, he joined Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods as the only players to win back-to-back Masters titles.

Still, the rest of his 2026 season explains why he gave himself an A. Back injury derailed his year: T46 at Players, T32 at U.S. Open, T40 at Open Championship. Later, he admitted that he had lost some interest in the long grind of the season and took a break from the Tour to spend time with his family. Another player who gave the same grade as Rory McIlroy is Ryan Fox.

Ryan Fox had to withdraw from The Players Championship. He did not play because he developed kidney stones just two days before the event. He needed emergency surgery in Ponte Vedra Beach that Thursday. The recovery kept him away from golf for about 10 days. Fox later called the procedure “absolutely brutal” and said it “wasn’t a very fun little period.”

He returned at the Texas Children’s Houston Open and slowly found his form again. Later, he won his first major title at the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale. That is why Fox also gave himself an A. Though he missed a tournament because of a health problem, the setback did not stop his season. His major win made up for the difficult period.

Rory’s honest answer stands out even more when compared with players who had no problem giving themselves the highest grade.

The A+ Club: Gary Woodland and Wyndham Clark

There are two other players in the same PGA Tour clip who gave themselves an A+, while McIlroy chose an A. Gary Woodland and Wyndham Clark both gave themselves an A+, but they took very different paths to get there. For Woodland, 2026 was all about making a comeback. He missed cuts early in the year and later opened up about the PTSD he had faced after his 2023 brain surgery. Then, he finally ended a seven-year wait for a win by setting a tournament record at the Houston Open.

Clark’s season was a different story. He was strong right from the start and won three times, including the U.S. Open. He also set a 36-hole scoring record at Shinnecock Hills. For Woodland, that A+ meant more than just his results. It was about everything he had been through and how far he had come. That is why he called it the season he was “most proud about” in his 18 years on Tour.

“Oh, this season’s an A+, for sure, for me. 18 years for me on PGA Tour, it’s the season I’m most proud about.” Woodland said, “I’ve won a major championship, I’ve won before, but this year, from where I’ve come from, what I’ve battled, this is by far the best season I’ve had by far.”

Gary Woodland’s answer felt very personal. He started 2026 by missing the cut at the Sony Open and Farmers Insurance Open. At The Players Championship, he also spoke openly about the PTSD he had dealt with since his 2023 brain surgery. He said he felt “1,000 pounds lighter” after talking about it.

A few weeks later, Woodland backed that up by winning the Texas Children’s Houston Open at a tournament-record 21-under 259, his first win since the 2019 U.S. Open. The moment was very emotional, with the crowd even going quiet so he could finish his putt.

Wyndham Clark’s season made his one-word answer easy to understand.

“A+. I think just the fact that I started out kind of average, turned around at a huge pivot point, kind of right at RBC Heritage, and then obviously winning with CJ, and then it really kept the momentum going, and this is my best year yet, so it has to be an A+.” Clark said.

He also won the BMW Championship against Patrick Cantlay. Now, Clark heads to East Lake ranked third in the FedExCup standings and is a strong contender for Player of the Year. He also became only the ninth player to win the U.S. Open wire-to-wire.

The Pros that gave themselves lower grades

Not everyone in the video graded themselves as generously, and two players landed notably below even McIlroy’s measured A. Ludvig Åberg gave himself the lowest mark of the group, a B-.

“I think the consistency I’ve shown in results has been good, but I think I expect a little bit more of myself,” he said.

It tracks with his year: five top-5s and six top-10s across 15 starts with no win, plus a T4 at the PGA Championship that stood as his best major result of the season, undercut by a putting game that ranked just 61st on Tour in strokes gained.

Min Woo Lee landed slightly higher at A-, pointing to how far he’d come making the Tour Championship. His season was built on a deliberate trade-off, dropping his clubhead speed from top-5 on Tour to 12th in exchange for accuracy, which paid off with a runner-up finish at Pebble Beach, his best-ever Signature Event result, and a career-low-tying 8-under 62 to open his Tour Championship debut. Solid, but by his own admission, not a season he was ready to call flawless.

When you look at all their answers, McIlroy’s A starts to make more sense. Woodland and Clark had no problem giving themselves an A+ because they stayed in great form for most of the year.

Åberg and Lee were more careful because they know there are still parts of their games they need to improve. McIlroy sits somewhere in the middle. He won the Masters, which is one of the biggest achievements in golf, but his season lost some rhythm after April.

So, even a Masters win was not enough for McIlroy to call his whole season perfect.

What separates McIlroy’s grade from the rest isn’t the number, it’s the standard. He’s holding himself to a bar where results alone don’t settle the argument, consistency across the calendar does. That’s a tougher measure than most players apply to themselves, and it’s also the one more likely to keep him hungry heading into 2027. A season that would satisfy most golfers evidently didn’t fully satisfy him.