Golf in Ireland set to reap the rewards of Rory McIlroy's grand slam

Rory McIlroy’s US Masters win last month was one of the most dramatic evenings of sport in living memory, placing the 35-year-old in the rarest of groups in the history of golf and at the top of any discussion about the greatest ever Irish sporting star. The achievement will go down as record-breaking in so many different ways, on and off the green. PERSONAL FORTUNES In personal terms, McIlroy became the first European and one of only six golf professionals in history to complete a career Grand Slam of the sport’s four Major tournaments in the sport: the Masters, the US Open, the US PGA and the Open Championship. It was the richest purse played for at the Masters, worth $21m, of which McIlroy walked away with $4.2m. That was a full $2m more than runner-up Justin Rose, who will rue the most expensive inch in sport. The money was perhaps the least important thing on the winner’s mind as he fell to the ground that Sunday night. After all, he had already pocketed the best part of $10m since the start of the year with wins at the AT&T Pebble Beach and Players Championship tournaments. Another milestone it enabled him to pass was his career earnings on the USPGA Tour, which nudged above $100m. And finally, on the personal side, it will increase the value of his endorsements, already estimated to be worth in the region of €40m a year. Nike is the most obvious of his sponsors. It pays $100m over a ten-year period to be the sole logo that you will see on his gear and his cap as he prowls the fairways. His other partners include TaylorMade, which provides his golf clubs, and Omega, which supplies his watch. He has partnerships, some of which are based around personal investments with commercial property isnsurance company FM and analytics company Optum. He is also involved with Golf Pass, a venture backed by NBC Sports with a strong base in Belfast, and Whoop, the personal data and wellbeing brand worn by McIlroy, NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes, Irish Oylmpic rower Fintan McCarthy, and Prince William, heir to the British throne. In an individual sport, where success and failure rests firmly in McIlroy’s own hands then, those hands are worth a lot more than their weight in gold. But what of the wider impact that his triumph will have? MEDIA MATTERS Coverage in Ireland and the UK was exclusively available on Sky Sports. The pay-per-view channel recorded its most watched day ever on the Sunday of the Masters, with 7.5m tuning into the different channels across the space of 24 hours. It hit a peak of 1.85m watching the Masters, equivalent to 37% of the total viewership across the two islands at that time on Sunday evening. In the US, where the numbers are bigger, the impact was even greater. The window in which the playoff took place was watched on CBS by 19.5m, with the average tuning in over the course of the evening hitting 12.7m, a 33 per cent increase on the 2024 tournament and the most watched golf event in the US since 2018. The figure is especially noteworthy as it is a notch higher than the average audience attracted to the NFL over the course of the full 2024 season. This did not put it anywhere near the peaks achieved in that sport, but it is still significant. THE GAME OF GOLF Every one of the 278,000 tickets for the Open Championship in Northern Ireland at Royal Portrush this year has long been snapped up, so there was little headroom to add to the expected €250m economic impact that the four-day tournament will bring to the region in July. In terms of the longer-term impact, though, the enthusiasm with which the win was watched and spoken about since will be substantial. Golf clubs in Ireland are primarily funded through membership. There are around 225,000 members who pay anything from €200 a year to north of 100 times that amount. Surveys undertaken in recent years also highlight that there are perhaps twice as many who engage in the sport on a pay-and-play basis, or in the increasing number of golf ranges that exist around the country. Many of these have invested in tracking technology which allows you to play virtual rounds on courses from Adare Manor to Pebble Beach. Investment has also gone into indoor golf venues, made popular in the US and now becoming so here as well. Sigmoid HQ has two venues in Dublin where you can play with real clubs into a giant screen that tracks your progress and allows you to enjoy a full round without leaving your bay. Pitch on Dawson Street in the centre of Dublin is almost perpetually booked out for leisure and corporate events where the same is possible alongside food and drink. Every aspect of the game is gearing up for a period of growth, spurred at least in part by McIlroy’s win. The confluence of this happening months ahead of the Open coming back to Northern Ireland, two years ahead of the Ryder Cup returning here for the first time in two decades to Adare Manor in 2027, and potentially the Open leaving the United Kingdom for the first time to be played at Portmarnock within the next decade. Rory McIlroy celebrates winning the 2025 Masters Tournament. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images) GOLF TOURISM The golf tourist is the holy grail for the Irish tourism industry, spending twice the amount of money as the average visitor. Half of Ireland’s golf visitors come from the US, where McIlroy was being cheered louder than their own Bryson DeChambeau through the final round of the Masters. Tens of thousands of players will follow in his footsteps, eager to soak up the courses where he learned his trade and the Irish hospitality that still holds an allure for travellers across the Atlantic. If McIlroy never won another tournament in his life, his place in history would be assured. The prospect of him remaining at the top of his game for many years to come, however, will have not only his bank managers but those representing many more aspects of the sport cheering him on louder than anyone else.

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