Tim Chan
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Masters champion Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland and caddie Harry Diamond walk on the No. 15 fairway during a practice round prior to the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club Augusta National/Getty Images If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Rolling Stone may receive an affiliate commission.
Rory McIlroy successfully defended his Masters title at this year’s tournament, lifting the trophy for a second straight year, and becoming only the fourth golfer in history to repeat as Masters champion, joining legendary names like Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods.
McIlroy’s 2026 Masters win added to his growing list of accomplishments, but according to a new biography on the Northern Irish golfer, the six-time Major winner has always seen himself as an outsider, putting him perpetually on the defense.
Rory is a new book penned by prominent golf writer Alan Shipnuck, and offers a deep dive into one of the PGA tour’s most passionate players. As Shipnuck writes, McIlroy “can overwhelm a golf course with his transcendent talent and then, at the next tournament, look utterly lost. McIlroy is golf’s most eloquent ambassador and a trash-talking troll, sometimes in the same press conference.”
NEW RELEASE Rory: The Heartache and Triumph of Golf’s Most Human Superstar
$28.91 $32.50 11% off
Buy Now On AmazonPart of the dichotomy is due to the golfer’s childhood growing up in Northern Ireland at a time where the region was fraught with political tensions and threats of war. Shipnuck posits that the desire to make it out of the country coupled with the pressure to make something of himself drove McIlroy to take his passion for golf seriously, and with aplomb. “He was younger and smaller,” Shipnucks recounts a friend of Mcllroy saying; “He got thrown into the deep end and either had to sink or swim.” The one thing he did have: “Determination.”
“Rory McIlroy contains multitudes,” the book description writes. “The child of a working-class family from a small town in a war-torn homeland now commutes to work in his own private jet and counts billionaires as confidants. As McIlroy enters the last act of his highly eventful career, this book is a chance,” the description states, “to understand a man of deep complexity and contradictions.”
From Avid Reader Press and Simon & Schuster the 320 page book is available now on hardcover for 11% off for a limited time. You can also read Rory on Kindle or listen to it as an audiobook (narrated by Shipnuck himself).
Released April 7, Rory has shot to the top of Amazon’s bestsellers list following his latest Masters triumph. Along with a look at his family life and sporting career, the book also examines the golfer’s rivalry with Tiger Woods, his oft-reported tabloid romances, and his new world navigating fatherhood to his five-year-old daughter.
Of course, while Rory is billed as the “definitive biography” of the golf star, McIlroy did not personally write or contribute to any of the portions in the book. Instead, the book is written by longtime Sports Illustrated reporter and bestselling author Shipnuck, who also wrote the Phil Mickelson biography, Phil, and the LIV Golf tell-all, LIV and Let Die.” Shipnuck draws from interviews he’s done with McIltory over the years, and more than 30 years as an award-winning member of the Golf Writers Association of America.
As Shipnuck writes in the book intro, “McIlroy’s victory at the 2025 Masters packed such an emotional punch because he is golf’s most vulnerable superstar. Across two decades as a pro he has been the anti-Tiger, letting fans into his heart and into his world. When McIlroy collapsed onto the final green at Augusta National, having at last completed the career Grand Slam, golf fans cried along with him because so many saw themselves in his struggles.”
Now, fans have yet another Masters victory to celebrate and a book to immerse themselves in as well.
