During the Players Championship on Wednesday, golf player Rory McIlroy had an unusual conflict as he apparently took away a spectator’s phone after his tee shot.
Quickly making waves on social media, the event shows the 35-year-old golfer running his tee shot and then squarely toward the throng to his left. McIlroy asks a fan, “can I see your phone?” in the video, then grabs it from the shocked spectator’s hands and heads off.
While his friend watches in shock, the confused fan stays transfixed, palm outstretched. McIlroy is seen briefly playing with the gadget then lowering it and carrying it along the course. Online rumors claim the fan might have mocked McIlroy over a bad tee shot, supposedly ending in the water. McIlroy is then supposed to have fired his second shot onto the fairway immediately before the strange incident started.
Following McIlroy’s first shot, one attendee said that the heckler had yelled, “just like 2011 at Augusta”—a reference at his infamous meltdown at the Masters where he missed out on the much-desired green jacket on the last day.
Entering the Sunday battle with a commanding four-shot lead over Jason Day, McIlroy had been Augusta’s star. On that last round, nevertheless, he experienced nothing less than disastrous events.
A sequence of bogeys and misfired putts brought him to the 13th tee, where he needed a miracle to leap back into the fray, but his tee shot sank horribly into the water, so determining his fate.
Augusta has become McIlroy’s enemy since that fateful day, with unresolved worries about whether he would ultimately succeed in Georgia weighing over his career. Still, McIlroy opened off 2025 with great success, winning the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro/Am in February.
Although his results at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Genesis Invitational may have faltered somewhat, the hype is growing as Augusta returns once more.
McIlroy will still be the focus of attention when he gets to Augusta next month, even if he is trying to resist the enormous pressure of reaching the sought-after career grand slam. Before the Masters tees off, he has already revealed intentions to visit Augusta National for some preparation rounds.
McIlroy revealed thoughts on his present form at a Wednesday talk at TPC Sawgrass: “I would argue even the two finishes post-Pebble [Genesis and Arnold Palmer] have been almost like the worst that they could be. Sunday in Bay Hill I finished poorly. Also finished poorly on Sunday at Torrey Pines.
“But the one thing I would say is that my putting from Torrey to Bay Hill turned around really nicely. I finished fifth [really seventh], so to see that flip around was quite motivating. I believe this to be last week’s ranking. That’s something about which I should be especially motivated entering this week, naturally, and then over the next three months.