It seems like the sky is the limit for Rory McIlroy, who has just added another major title to his list of accolades by winning the coveted green jacket at the Masters.
This concludes the professional golfer’s first Career Grand Slam – having tasted victories at the US Open, the PGA Championship, the Open Championship, and now the Masters, solidifying the Irishman’s name among golf elites.
Aside from McIlroy, only Tiger Woods has completed a Career Grand Slam in the last 50 years.
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McIlroy has accumulated a substantial amount of money by tournament winnings and agreeing sponsorship deals. What is McIlroy’s net worth and where does he rank on the richest person in the world list?
Rory McIlroy’s net worth explained
Having won multiple championships, Rory McIlroy is one of the wealthiest players in the world of golf. While his current net worth is unknown, Forbes estimates that the golfer earned $83 million last year thanks to winnings and brand endorsements.
According to the BBC, he became the second golfer after Woods to earn more than $100 million in career earnings on the PGA Tour – this was even before winning the Grand Slam. He reached the milestone after earning $338,000 at the 2025 Houston Open.
He ranked second on the Forbes 2024 list of the world's highest-paid golfers and 19th on the 2024 list of the world's highest-paid athletes.
His career – and fortunes – reached new heights when he won the 2025 Masters Tournament on 13 April, achieving the Career Grand Slam, which was 11 years in the making. The PGA Tour revealed McIlroy took home $4.2 million in prize money after winning the 2025 Masters title.
Rory McIlroy’s early life and professional career
Rory McIlroy was born on 4 May 1989 in Holywood, a town in County Down, Northern Ireland. He was first introduced to golf at the age of two when his father, a golfer himself, bought him a set of plastic clubs.
McIlroy was a child prodigy. At just three, he had gained a reputation at the Holywood Golf Club for hitting 40-yard drives. Four years later, he became the youngest-ever member of the club. When he was just ten years old, he spoke to BBC Sport about his ambition of winning all major championships.
To fund McIlroy’s ambitions of playing golf at a professional level, his parents took on extra jobs, BelfastLive reports. His father would work 100 hours a week, while his mother looked after her son during the day and worked night shifts to make ends meet.
In 1998, at the age of nine, he tasted his first significant international victory at the U10 World Championship in Florida. The young golfer then went on to win Ireland its first title since 1987 in the 2007 European Amateur Team Championship, where he defeated France in the stroke-play position.
Since turning professional in 2007, he has made a combined 509 appearances across the DP World Tour and PGA Tour, according to the European Tour. His first win came on the DP World Tour in 2009 at the Dubai Desert Classic – he has won it a record four times since.
He became World Number One in 2012 and has spent a total of 122 weeks at the top spot of the Official World Golf Ranking.
He has five Majors, three WGC Championships, a win at the Scottish Open, ten wins on the DP World Tour, and 20 on the PGA Tour.
Now 35, it makes McIlroy the second-oldest player to complete the Career Grand Slam.
How much does Rory McIlroy make in brand endorsements?
McIlroy is known as one of the most marketable athletes in the world. SportsPro put him in third place in their “The World’s 50 Most Marketable 2013” list, behind footballers Neymar and Messi.
That same year, he signed endorsement deals with Bose and Omega, and a 10-year deal with Nike, which was worth up to $250 million. The BBC called it “one of the most lucrative deals in British sport”.
In 2017, Nike extended the deal for another 10 years for apparel only, worth $200 million. It let McIlroy sign a $100 million deal with TaylorMade for equipment, lasting a decade, according to The Guardian.
McIlroy has also partnered with Woods on TMRW Sports, which was valued at about $500 million in 2024, per Bloomberg.
Other than that, the golfer has endorsements with insurance company FM, NBC Sport’s digital golf membership Golfpass, healthcare company Optum, and Swiss luxury watchmaker Omega.
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