Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show
Andy Johnson reflects on Rory McIlroy going back-to-back at the Masters
13 Apr 2026
Chapter 1: What does Andy Johnson think about Rory McIlroy's back-to-back Masters wins?
Rahimi, Harrison, Grody.
We are family here. We are family.
Middays 10 to 2 on 104.3 The Score.
And here we go. His year again. Rory is a rare repeat winner at Augusta.
I just can't believe I waited 17 years to get one green jacket and I get two in a row. It's just sort of the way, I don't know. I think all of my perseverance at this golf tournament over the years has really started to pay off.
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Chapter 2: How did Rory McIlroy perform during the final round of the Masters?
It was a tough weekend. I did the bulk of my work on Thursday and Friday, but just so, so happy to hang in there and get the job done.
And Rory really did hang in there. He became a back-to-back winner at Augusta. And after an incredible final round of action, we go to our hotline. That is where we find Andy Johnson. He is AndyTFE on Twitter. He is the founder of Fried Egg Golf and co-host of the Shotgun Start podcast. Thanks for joining us, Andy.
Hey, Layla.
Chapter 3: What challenges did Rory face during the Masters tournament?
Thanks for having me on. Long-time fan of the score. I used to... fall asleep at night to the score as a kid growing up in Chicago. So always a pleasure to come on.
Well, hopefully you stay awake, but we are happy to bore you again should you need some Zs. What did you think of the final round? We were laughing at it on Saturday when we were doing our show from Las Vegas.
Rory had put together one of the great rounds for the ages in the lead after 36, burning six of his last seven holes on Friday, only for that lead to be just enough to outlast a threat from Scotty Scheffler.
It was an amazing weekend.
Chapter 4: How does mental pressure affect golfers like Rory McIlroy?
After Friday, you thought it might be one of those snooze, runaway winters where you don't get a lot of action on the weekend, but Rory didn't really have his A game all week. He was driving it pretty wild. Usually, his superpower is his driver, and it was off all week. It got a little bit better on Sunday, but then it ended up in that classic Masters mold where
You're coming down the back nine, and it seems like there's three, four players. Any one of them, if they go out and just grab it, they can take the win. And I think Rory hit a few key shots, namely the iron on 12, a hole that often is where everything unwinds. He hit just a great approach shot there and kind of took it while everybody else couldn't really make a run.
And I'm curious, when you saw Rory's ability to stay at the top of that leaderboard for four straight days, we talked about it earlier, just the fourth guy to do that, how difficult is that mentally, do you think, on a golfer, even of his caliber, and especially after having broken through last season to get his first green jacket?
Yeah, it's definitely the unique aspect of golf, where, you know, you obviously, it's really...
Chapter 5: What insights does Andy Johnson provide about Scotty Scheffler's performance?
it's not a reactive sport like everything else. It's kind of like I think the best comparisons are pitching and baseball or, you know, kicking field goals in the NFL where you, like, really have to think about every shot.
And then you span it out over four days where, you know, you get done with the day, whether it's the morning or the afternoon you're playing, and you have to think about it all night and the next morning. And you get, you know, it just kind of weighs on you. And doing that over four days, I think it's super hard.
And one of the things with Augusta being just such a demanding golf course where if you hit great shots, you can really score out there. But the second you're just slightly off, it becomes very, very challenging. And with that aspect, it's really hard to play with a lead out there because you're subconsciously kind of take your foot off the gas and you play conservatively.
And that's the worst thing you can do at Augusta National. You kind of have to keep your foot on the gas.
Chapter 6: What are the implications of Rory and Scotty's rivalry for the future of golf?
And it's really hard to do when you have the lead out there.
We are talking to Andy Johnson, the founder of Fried Egg Golf, co-host of the Shotgun Start podcast on Rahimi Harrison-Grody. And Andy, I did want to get into a little bit about what we saw in the third and fourth rounds out of Scotty Scheffler. To be one of the first players to go bogey-free since the 1940s. I believe it was 1942.
What do you think of just what he was able to do in those last two rounds to challenge?
Yeah, yeah. After the first two days, he kind of got the bad end of the draw where it was really, really hard on Thursday afternoon. Definitely the players that went off in the afternoon on Thursday got the tougher aspect of the draw, but that's kind of part of golf.
And you see him, you know, every tournament, there's this air that kind of hangs over the whole event of when's Scottie going to make his run or who's going to beat Scottie.
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Chapter 7: How has Sergio Garcia's behavior impacted his career in golf?
He's been the best player in the world. for now, going on three years, undeniably the best player in the world. And he keeps stacking more and more accomplishments. And this week, you know, he brought probably his B game the first two rounds, and he's 12 out of the lead. And then for him to end up one back, it's just astonishing. He's such a great player.
I think he's played the best golf since Tiger Woods the last three years. So, you know, he's just a historic player. And And I think Rory adding one, adding a major, he gets to six.
Chapter 8: What does the future hold for Rory McIlroy and Scotty Scheffler in upcoming tournaments?
Scottie's at four. The next five years of golf, watching these two kind of go back and forth and seeing where each of them end up with their major count is going to be just an amazing thing to watch.
Andy Johnson is the founder of Fried Egg Golf and the co-host of the Shotgun Star podcast, joining us here on Rahimi Harris and Grody.
Andy, just to go back to what you just said, is this what golf needs at this time, is to have this kind of two-man game where you've got team Scotty Scheffler and you've got team Rory McIlroy, and now it can elevate the sport itself with two guys who have elevated themselves above the rest?
Yeah, obviously with Tiger, Tiger was such a force of nature. You know, Chicago sports fans don't, you know, he's basically the Michael Jordan of golf and took golf to places that it had never been. And, you know, in his, I would say, post-playing career at this point, he, you know, golf has always been looking for the next big thing. And
Scotty's personality is never going to jump off the page and win stands over, but his dominance does. And Rory, I think, has been now, I would say, undeniably the greatest European golfer ever. And it seems like we're in this kind of second run of his career where he's starting to stack majors again. He won his first four majors really early in his career and then went through an 11-year drought.
and now he's got two in the last five majors and seemingly is the best version of himself as he's ever been, and Scottie's as good as we've seen since Tiger. So it really sets up for great storylines. There's a lot of other really good players, but these two have separated themselves out at the top.
I think the one thing we haven't really seen from them, we've seen some great duels between Bryson and Rory, In recent years, the one thing we haven't seen is that classic Scottie-Rory duel at a major. And obviously, when we look back on this one 10 years from now, you're going to see, oh, Scottie finished one back. But it never really felt like Scottie was going to win the golf tournament.
And if we get one of those kind of classic duels between these two, I think it would really kind of set the sport off onto ā you know, a whole new trajectory. But, you know, in recent years with, obviously, Steph Curry's been a golfer forever, but with, like, LeBron getting into golf, golf has caught kind of more of the public attention than it ever has.
Scotty Scheffler came so close on that long putt he had where he could have forced a playoff if it had just been an inch to the right.
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