Masters 2026: There's only one man who can stop Rory McIlroy

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Patrick Reed glanced from the clubhouse veranda down at Rory McIlroy as McIlroy came up the 18th, not unlike an apex predator surveying its prey. That sounds absurd given the size of McIlroy's lead—the largest 36-hole lead in Masters history—and the temptation is to say the only thing standing between McIlroy and a second consecutive green jacket are the ghosts that McIlroy seemingly vanished last spring. Poetic as that sounds, it's prisoner of the moment and ignorant of the past. There is a man at Augusta National who has stopped McIlroy before and knows how to do it again.

Reed turned in his second consecutive 69, tied for second at the halfway point with Sam Burns. The only blemish came at the last, unable to get up-and-down, his par putt failing to slide in, a single dropped shot that cost him a Reed-McIlroy pairing for one final day. No matter. Saturday is moving day. Sundays are eternal.

“The worst part and the thing that frustrated me most is I hit every golf shot how I wanted to,” Reed said in the afterglow of the bogey. “On 18 you're having to get up and down, and then hit the putt where I wanted to and just doesn't go in. Things like that happen around here. In golf in general.

“But, yeah, you know, I mean, golf game felt OK … any time I sit there and shoot back-to-back 69s or anything in the 60s on Thursday, Friday in Augusta, you're happy.”

No disrespect to the others chasing McIlroy. Burns proved his mettle at the U.S. Open. Justin Rose knows these grounds as well as anyone without a green jacket to show for it. Shane Lowry is a major champion. Tommy Fleetwood is playing the best golf of his life. They are all legitimate, all dangerous. But to hunt down McIlroy at Augusta National, with every patron willing him toward history, demands something beyond talent or preparation. It requires a particular brand of conviction that most would mistake for arrogance. That is Reed's native tongue, powered not by bravado alone but by evidence.

Masters 2026

J.D. Cuban

Yes, Reed once declared himself a top-five player in the world before the world agreed. What the ensuing ridicule missed was that this is precisely the mentality that separates the best from the rest, in golf and in everything else. Reed does not look across the leaderboard and see McIlroy as the favorite and himself as the challenger. He sees an equal. Maybe a peer. Maybe something less.

That may be irrational, given their resumes. But closing a six-shot deficit is going to require a bit of that.

It helps that it's an irrational based on history. At the 2018 Masters, Reed and McIlroy shared the final pairing. McIlroy applied heat early before fading as Reed seized the moment and the jacket. At the 2016 Ryder Cup, their Sunday singles match was so raw, so emotionally combustible, that both men were visibly spent by the turn—the back nine a mutual stumble after the front nine had taken everything they had.

Then there is the animus. Reed's Twitter account attempted to implicate McIlroy in a controversial drop at Torrey Pines in 2021, inadvertently exposing what appeared to be a burner account in the process. And then TeeGate—when McIlroy, having been subpoenaed by Reed's attorney on Christmas Day, chose to ignore Reed at a DP World Tour event, prompting Reed to flip a LIV Golf tee in his direction. (This all happened.) Dumb, sure, but golf gets accused of being too polite. Here, at least, is something with teeth.

And credit Reed with this much: it would be convenient to cast him as the villain, especially set against McIlroy's near-universal popularity. But Reed isn't a villain. He's something more useful—he is utterly, defiantly himself. He is not the longest off the tee. His iron play is competent without being exceptional. But his short game is a form of warfare, and his competitive constitution is ironclad. He made his name at Ryder Cups and Presidents Cups not through elegance but through refusal to concede, willing himself and his partners across the finish line through sheer, grinding attrition.

Saturday is not a match-play scenario for McIlroy, but in a sense it is for Reed, as he goes to bed knowing the only thing between him and another green jacket is McIlroy. In that scenario, advantage, Reed.

“As players and as professional golfer you always have to believe in yourself that you can. Until you do, you always have that just little voice of doubt in the back of your mind,” Reed says. “Now I was able to close out in '18 and give myself some good opportunities since then. Hopefully we can go head and get my second one.”

Late Friday, Augusta National’s immaculate green terrain bled into shades of yellow and brown and purple, the course hardening, quickening, turning unforgiving in the long afternoon light. The Masters, for all its magnolia-draped beauty, was getting mean. Patrick Reed has never needed an invitation to meet mean. Predators don't catch their prey by playing nice. They catch them by being patient, by being relentless, by understanding that the moment the prey believes it is safe is precisely when it isn't. Reed will go to bed Friday night in second place, six back, and watching.