McIlroy willing to get heart broken in bid for Masters glory

AUGUSTA, Georgia : Rory McIlroy has had his fair share of Masters disappointment over the years but the Northern Irishman said on Tuesday he is ready to risk getting his heart broken again in an attempt to find true love in the form of a Green Jacket.

This year marks McIlroy's 11th shot at completing the career Grand Slam of golf's four majors, and he is ready to put himself out there after ditching the "self-preservation mechanism" he has leaned on to avoid getting hurt again.

"People, I think, instinctively as human beings we hold back sometimes because of the fear of getting hurt, whether that's a conscious decision or subconscious decision, and I think I was doing that on the golf course a little bit for a few years," McIlroy told reporters.

"Once you go through those heartbreaks, as I call them, or disappointments, you get to a place where you remember how it feels and you wake up the next day and you're like, yeah, life goes on, it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be.

"You dust yourself off and you go again. I think that's why I've become a little more comfortable in laying everything out there and being somewhat vulnerable."

With two wins under his belt in 2025, McIlroy has never arrived at the Masters in better form but that success has only ramped up talk about him becoming the sixth player to complete the career Grand Slam.

For his part, McIlroy is doing all he can to avoid letting that narrative distract his Green Jacket dreams, and off the course has been watching the Netflix series "Bridgerton" and reading a John Grisham novel.

"Just trying to block out that noise as much as possible. I need to treat this tournament like all the other tournaments that I play throughout the year," McIlroy said.

"I understand