Nick Faldo doesn’t hold back on McIlroy winning more majors: “I think it will be tough for Rory to win another one”

Rory McIlroy ends 2025 top of the DP World Tour rankings with 5,975 points, clinching his seventh Order of Merit title - and more importantly, a place in gold history. Back in April he won the Masters, finally getting his hands on the green jacket to become the first European player to complete a career grand slam - and one of just six players to have achieved the feat.

Colin Montgomery, who holds the record for finishing as golf’s top player of the year (eight, one more than McIlroy), insists that the Northern Irishman is the “best European golfer ever”.

Not an easy feat to replicate

But Nick Faldo feels that McIlroy, who ended an 11-year major drought in Augusta, may have peaked. Successes at the Ryder Cup and the Race to Dubai crowned a year to remember for the 36-year-old. But will Rory win another major, seeing as he went over a decade without? Faldo thinks it’s unlikely.

“It is like climbing Everest, you don’t turn around and say ‘let’s go up again next month.’” Faldo told the Belfast Telegraph. “There was so much emotion at Augusta, and you cannot reproduce the emotion to win a Major like that again, so I think it will be tough for Rory to win another one. He’s either going to be disappointed that he’s won 10 or he is going to be ecstatic that he’s got to five.”

Faldo was 38 when he won his last major title (the Masters in 1996) so there is still hope for McIlroy - although it took the Englishman four years of trying.

Nevertheless, McIlroy closes his most lucrative year, having amassed $35,877,054 in on-course earnings and bonuses, including $2 million for winning his seventh Race to Dubai title on the DP World Tour.

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