Brad Faxon says one of the coolest things Rory McIlroy does ‘every single day’ was something Arnold Palmer always told players to do

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Perhaps it was recency bias, but there really did appear to be something completely different about the 2025 Masters as Rory McIlroy went on to win to complete the career grand slam.

Of course, The Masters this year will be put alongside the likes of 2019, 2001 and 1986 for being one of the most significant events the game has seen. Rory McIlroy completed the career grand slam after 11 years of waiting. None of the players already in that club took so long to win the one major they were missing.

But there was scenes around Augusta which simply typify why the first major of the year is so special. The patrons chanted for Rory like he had just walked onto the first tee at the Ryder Cup. And it really did seem that the coverage made a much larger deal of the reactions of the galleries when the leaderboards would be changed.

It was surely golf’s most satisfying result since Tiger Woods won at Augusta five years earlier. No-one will be ashamed to admit to having a tear in their eye when McIlroy collapsed down in the spot where he had secured golfing immortality.

What Rory McIlroy does just like Arnold Palmer

McIlroy is loved like few players in the current game. And speaking on Golf Channel, his putting coach Brad Faxon noted that he has a certain quality which helped make Arnold Palmer The King.

“He’s a tremendous guy, he’s an Arnold Palmer-like player. He’s got charisma,” he said.

“And maybe one of the coolest things I’ve witnessed is when he walks through a crowd and people are shouting ‘Rory’, and ‘can I have your autograph’, he looks at them, he looks at them in the eye, and that was a lesson I learned from Arnold Palmer, my rookie year in 1984 when Arnold Palmer told me, ‘if you want a long career, look people in the eye, don’t look down at your feet like a lot of the young guys do’, and that was back in 1984. And Rory does that every single day.”

How Rory McIlroy once described Arnold Palmer’s impact on the game of golf

Palmer may not have had the major tallies of Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods, but it says everything that he remains such an influential figure in the sport nearly a decade on from his passing.

He is one of the game’s biggest superstars. So much of how the sport looks today came about because of Palmer. And it appears that many of his lessons are being passed on to each generation.

Speaking after his death in 2016, McIlroy lauded the impact that Palmer had on the game of golf.

“I think Arnold meant an awful lot to every one of us. Anyone that is involved with the game of golf in any capacity, especially the ones that get paid to play it or get paid to write about it or get paid to whatever, I mean, he was a massive part of that. And I think we all owe him a massive debt of gratitude for what he did for the game,” he said, as reported by Sky Sports.

“I’ve been lucky enough to spend a little bit of time with Arnold at this tournament over the past couple of years. I had a dinner with Arnold and after the first round in 2015, that I’ll remember for the rest of my life. So I’ll tell stories about that to my grandkids, hopefully, one day that he was a special man.”

There is a magic that only a small number of players have. It is an ability to scoop up every single person outside the ropes and watching at home and bring them on a journey in which they really feel the highs and lows of every single shot.

There will never be anyone quite like Arnold Palmer. But Rory McIlroy certainly seems to have some of that same magic.