When Rory McIlroy won the Masters, he finally met the moment.
When McIlroy’s rollercoaster finally ended, it was like everything clicked into place. Nantz stretched out the moment because it mattered. He and CBS made McIlroy the clear star of the story, capturing every bit of his frustration and joy without ever crossing into over-the-top territory. It felt genuine. It felt exactly right.
“At the time, it was exhilaration,” Nantz told Rich Eisen on The Rich Eisen Show when asked to share his perspective. “It was heartache. It was the ups and downs that you just documented. And it really was human. It was a facsimile of a way that life can be for all of us. Ups and downs, coping with it, facing adversity, dealing with triumphs. All of this at a time when he’s in pursuit of one of the rarest conquests in sports, and that is to be a career Grand Slam-winner. He was the first to clinch it since Tiger [Woods] did in 2000, and only the sixth of all-time, so it put him into very rarefied air and company with the likes of [Jack] Nicklaus and [Ben] Hogan and [Gene] Sarazen and [Gary] Player, as well.
“So, at the time, it was wrenching. You felt at the end of the show like you’d been through the wringer because there’s so many times that he won it, and lost it. And when you have time to reflect on it, it was one of the great stories ever to have a chance to tell. We’re in the reactionary storytelling business. We don’t know what’s going to happen next. We don’t have a script. It’s all ad-lib. It’s seeing and telling people what you see. And it made it all more human. It made it even richer as a story that he won it and lost it so many times, and in the end, he figured out a way to win it.”
This was a moment years in the making for Rory McIlroy, and for anyone who’s followed him through the heartbreak. The Masters had always been the one that slipped away. When he finally finished the job, you could feel the weight come off his shoulders.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to broadcast 40 Masters tournaments,” Nantz continues. “That was my 40th. And I walked into Jack Nicklaus in 1986, winning his sixth green jacket. And I got to be there for Tiger’s five, including the win for the ages in 1997, and the one in 2019 that no one saw, him being able to win at that station in his life and his career, but he did. I’ve had so many remarkable stories to try to tell. But this might’ve been the greatest story. I’m not saying it’s the greatest Masters, but it’s definitely on my very shortlist, top three.
“And it was just wonderful for the game. It was wonderful for us to see a roadmap for all of us mere mortals for how you deal with ups and downs and despair and glory. It was all wrapped into one. It almost feels like a dream sequence now, but I’ll count that forever as being a very special moment. When he finally knocked it in in the playoff to beat Justin Rose and complete the career Grand Slam, all I could think to say was, ‘The long journey is over.’ And it was over. Not only on that day was a long journey, but his career. It waited 11 years to close out the Grand Slam… and I just had it and tagged it with, ‘McIlroy has his masterpiece.’ It’ll go down in the annals of golf as one of the greatest golf events of all time.”
And that’s because Jim Nantz and CBS helped make it one.
They didn’t get in the way of the moment. They let it breathe. Nantz’s choice to pull back and let the emotion speak for itself is the kind of subtlety you don’t always notice in real time, but you feel it. The moment mattered, and Nantz treated it that way.
And when Nantz talks about it with Rich Eisen several weeks later, it reinforces why he was the right guy for that moment. And if it felt emotional, that’s because it was, for McIlroy, for fans, and for Nantz, who’s called enough iconic moments to know when one truly stands apart from the rest.
That’s what made this different. McIlroy’s struggles have always played out in public. The near-misses, the Sunday fades. The weight of expectation. So when he finally finished it, Nantz and CBS stepped aside, letting every second of those seven silent minutes hit you.
McIlroy got his Grand Slam. Nantz got the call. And we got something that won’t fade anytime soon.