The story behind Rory’s second green jacket starts long before Augusta.

Rory McIlroy grew up in a modest, semi-detached house in Holywood, County Down, Northern Ireland. His mom Rosie spent her nights packaging rolls of tape at a 3M factory in Bangor. His dad Gerry was stringing together three jobs — cleaning showers in the morning, bartending at Holywood Golf Club through the afternoon, and returning to the sports club bar in the evening. Gerry worked an estimated 100 hours a week. They did this to give him a chance.

Rory entered the Masters weekend with a record-setting six-shot lead…all of us paying attention to his will to win, his pure talent…and the determination. We all either said it out loud or thought it…” This Masters is over, Rory is going to win by a long shot.”

Then Sunday happened…or should I say, then golf happened. Everything got ugly fast. He fell two shots behind Cam Young and Justin Rose. At one point, the world was watching his lead dissolve shot by shot on one of the most unforgiving courses in the world.

Most players don’t come back from that. Not at Augusta. Not with the weight of history on their back.

But Rory did.

He birdied holes 7 and 8 on the front nine, which helped him crawl back into contention. Then, he seized control with a bold shot over Rae’s Creek to 7 feet for birdie on the 12th. Then he hit a 350-yard drive on the 13th… into the fairway this time… that set up another birdie to a comfortable lead.

But he hit a wild drive on 18, nearly into the 10th fairway, hit his approach into a bunker, blasted out to 12 feet, and two-putted for bogey. It was a nail-biter to the end, clinching the win by one stroke.

“I was a little kid with a dream, some people probably thought it was outlandish to dream the things I wanted to do, but I had amazing support from back home, and I can’t thank them enough.”

On Sunday, standing in Augusta, Georgia, with a second green jacket on his back and his daughter Poppy in his arms… that outlandish dream came true.

Rory once said, “My parents were two very working-class people, and I’ve got to this point in my life just because I believed in myself and I had people around me that believed in me.”

From the parents’ point of view, it was worth every night shift. It was worth every tireless hour, putting in the labor… the relentless, grinding, almost brutal sacrifice of love. And when the jacket was on, and the microphone was in his hand, he looked at his parents and said, “I owe everything to you. You’re the most wonderful parents, and if I can be half the parent to Poppy that you are to me, I know I’ll have done a good job.”

Job well done, Grerry and Rosie.