The Masters finish had an elite level of history to it

Rory McIlroy won the Masters on Sunday, his second straight green jacket in a row. Just think about how impossible a sentence like that sounded even 13 months ago. We live in a seriously-adjusted new reality.

While Augusta National marked Rory’s first win of this professional golf season he racked up quite a few last year (besides the Masters obviously). McIlroy is firmly the number two player in the world in the Official World Golf Rankings.

Number one in the world is obviously Scottie Scheffler, the winner of two of the three previous Masters Tournaments that preceded Rory’s win. It is astonishing that they have won four of the last five between them.

Scheffler did not add to his Augusta wardrobe on Sunday, but he came incredibly close by finishing in solo second place. Interestingly, this made for some rather impressive history.

This year’s Masters marked the third major championship since 1986 in which the top two finishers (McIlroy and Scheffler) were, in either order, the first and second ranked players in the OWGR.

Major Championships where the top 2 finishers were the top 2 in the OWGR, since 1986

• 2026 Masters: Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler
• 2002 U.S. Open: Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson
• 1991 Masters: Ian Woosnam and Jose Maria Olazabal

On a basic level it makes sense that the top two players in the world would finish as the top two players in a major championship. Clearly that is not exactly something that you can write in stone as happening, though.

Could the duo finish atop the rest of the field at any other major this season?

We will see.