The prediction Sir Nick Faldo got spot on about Rory McIlroy before he won The Masters

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Rory McIlroy’s win at the 2025 Masters is one of the great sporting success stories of the year.

McIlroy’s titanic battle with Augusta National over four days culminated in him holding off his good friend Justin Rose in a playoff to finally land both the Masters title and the Grand Slam.

For McIlroy, it was the culmination of years of work and near misses and anyone who says they weren’t a touch emotional seeing him win, is probably lying.

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Still, when it came to the actual golf he played around Augusta that week, it came down to talent, consistency, and above all, the willpower and bottle to play certain shots.

Indeed, looking back to what was predicted about McIlroy ahead of The Masters in ’25, three-time winner Sir Nick Faldo seemingly got it spot on.

What Sir Nick Faldo said about Rory McIlroy winning the Masters

Rory McIlroy has been fancied nearly every year for The Masters. Year upon year we heard predictions suggesting it was finally going to be his time, only for him to fail.

In 2025, he finally put it right and it was down to a number of things going his way, including his own iron play.

In fact, that is something that Sir Nick Faldo commented on prior to the week, suggesting McIlroy might well win if he could control his iron play.

“He’s 35. He’s playing great. It’s just the mental side. Rory knows he can beat everybody. He probably knows he can beat Augusta. But it’s himself. How long can he keep the trust in himself going?,” Faldo said.

“You can’t be fragile on your trust at all. We have such a brutal game I don’t think you can lose even five per cent of your trust. You’ve got to be 100 per cent, every shot.

“The most obvious is trust in his short irons. That’s the key for Rory this week. I mean, he drives it so beautifully. But I come back to where do your bad shots go? Making bogeys with short irons in your hands, for pros, that’s demoralising. And it’s gone on for a long time with him. But if he just gets the trust in those short irons, he could do it.”

As we saw, McIlroy hit one of the greatest iron shots of his life on 15 this year in what will go down as one of the best shots in Masters history.

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Rory McIlroy’s approach stats in 2025 show there’s room to improve

For all McIlroy’s brilliance in 2025 and the wins he got, there is actually a glaring gap in his metrics that show he can improve.

And it comes in the metric which Faldo discussed before The Masters.

While McIlroy is top ten in strokes gained for the season in totals, off the tee and in putting, he’s nowhere near where he should be in terms of approach.

McIlroy sits way down in 68th for SG approach overall, while he’s also well down the list in all the approach metrics, as we can see below.

The good news here for McIlroy is that given he was so successful being this bad, then any improvement is likely to see him be even more dominant.

Rest assured, McIlroy will win in 2026, it’s just a case of how many times.