Northern Irish overtook Bryson DeChambeau, Justin Rose and his ghosts of conquering Augusta National and snapping his decade-long drought. But the euphoria of the career-defining victory eventually soured as McIlroy searched for his next mountain to summit. The joy of a moment he had been waiting for all his life was replaced by an existential question: What comes after you make your dreams come true?
“Look, you dream about that last shot going into the Masters, but you don’t think about what comes next,” McIlroy said at the 2025 US Open at Oakmont. “I think I’ve always been a player who struggles to play after a big event, after winning whatever tournament. I always struggle to show up motivated the next week because you’ve just accomplished something, and you want to enjoy it, and you want to kind of enjoy the fact that you’ve accomplished a goal. I think chasing a certain goal for the better part of a decade and a half allowed me to relax.
“I think he’s trying to have a bit of amnesia and forget what happened six weeks ago,” McIlroy said later that day. “Then I just tried to find the motivation to get back out there and work as hard as I did. I worked extremely hard on my game from October of last year to April of this year. It was nice to see the fruits of my labor come to fruition and everything happen. But at the same time, you have to enjoy it. You have to enjoy what I’m doing and I’ll probably continue to feel like that. to do it.”
The existential question that came to McIlroy’s door in the wake of his Masters triumph is one that many elite athletes have wrestled with. When David Duval won the 2001 Open Championship, he was shocked to find that “the one” he was chasing had already evaporated on the plane ride home. Kevin Durant lifted his first championship trophy with the Golden State Warriors, but he didn’t find his soul full in the way he thought. Tom Brady has always said that the best championship is the other.
Nor was McIlroy the only major champion to face that condition in 2025. Scottie Scheffler gave a long dissertation at the Open Championship to work so hard for just a few moments of happiness and place his value on things bigger than golf.
“It only lasts a few minutes, a euphoric feeling,” Scheffler said. “To win the Byron Nelson Championship at home (in May) — I literally worked my whole life to get good at golf to have a chance to win that tournament. Life goes on.”
As Scheffler prepared to earn his second degree of the year, 25-year-old Maja Stark was in the midst of her own research.
The young Swedish star held Nelly Korda won the 2025 US Open for women at Erin Hills in May, achieving a lifelong dream by winning women’s golf’s top prize. But after her win in Wisconsin, Stark missed five of her next seven cuts, including short stops at the AIG Women’s Open and Evian. Her best finish in the two months after Erin Hills was a T47 at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. where Stark broke her cane as her emotions boiled over as her week in Texas drew to a close.
This week at the International Crown, Stark admitted her US Women’s Open victory left her searching for her next big goal.
“Honestly, it was a little difficult afterwards because it was something I had been looking forward to for so long, thinking about it for so long, and the US Open is my favorite,” Stark said. “I was very comfortable after that, but maybe it was too comfortable because I thought you have your Tour card for five years, and I achieved the goal that I wanted to achieve, which is just to win the US Open.
“So it was a little tough for me, and I feel like it took a few months to come back and get the motivation back that I felt earlier in my career. So, yeah, it was really tough this summer.”
Stark has been working with a sports psychologist to recover from a moment she had worked her whole life to achieve.
“I think it was just time, really,” Stark said of overcoming the illness. “It feels like you went down from — well, my level wasn’t very high, but you go down from people wanting to talk about it all the time, and you have to keep thinking about this week, and I feel like I wasn’t living in that week anymore. I had to move on, and I was like now we’re doing that, we set some goals for that new season, that I needed mental help for the rest of it.”
Lydia Ko, who is playing in the first team competition of her career this week at the International Crown, know the feeling. Last summer, she stood on an Olympic podium in France after winning the gold medal to secure her place in the Hall of Fame. A few weeks later, Ko won the AIG Women’s Open in St. Louis. Andrews to close the summer of life. Then came what psychologists call post-achievement depression, or the hunt for something more.
For Ko, she found solace in a Hall of Fame career that few can rival. IOK it’s okay to be happy with your accomplishments while still wanting to move on. There is no shame in wanting more.
“I think I thought my life or maybe the way I thought about myself was going to change when I got into the Hall of Fame and I did a lot of the things I wanted to do before it actually happened, and I’m sure Rory is thinking the same thing in similar parts where everyone was like, oh, the Masters is what he’s been missing. What if? And then he did it,” Ko KGA25 said at the KGA25 Championship.’ “And as much as I’m sure he’s so happy and relieved, he’s just as good the day before as he was before he won it.
“I think that’s what I came to peace with. I think sometimes when it’s right in front of you and you look at all these stats, you feel like you have to do more. I think some of the things that we’ve already taken for granted. I think that’s what I realized the most and that’s what made me realize that I still have to go out there and practice well after the week.”
Ko was by Stark’s side this week as the US Women’s Open champion took her breath away. Ko once again acknowledged that she knows struggle, as she praised Stark for being open about her turmoil and the mental battle she’s faced. Both know they are neither the first nor the last to climb a mountain and find no fulfillment at the top. Human beings are not wired to hunt a single goal. We are seekers and wanderers by nature. There can always be another, always something else.
For McIlroy, found it in the Open Championship again at Royal Portrush and again in winning a Ryder Cup away to Bethpage Black. Ko climbed the mountain again last summer, bounced back and is looking for her first US Women’s Open and KPMG Women’s PGA titles to complete her career Grand Slam.
As for Stark, she’s setting new goals and looking for new mountains to climb. She will do so as the US Open Women’s champion and is now better equipped to handle the demotion whenever she reaches her next peak.
For all of them, the search continues. It never really stops.
;)
