In case you forgot: McIlroy won three of golf’s four majors by his 26th birthday, and looked ready to dominate the sport for years … but he kept coming short at Augusta. He finally won the Masters in 2025 at 35 years old, and now he can’t stop winning the damn thing!

It’s always a roller coaster with Rory. Last year he bricked a short putt on 18 that would’ve won the tournament, and had to win a playoff over Justin Rose. This year, he had a tournament-record six-stroke lead after two rounds, but lost it over the course of Saturday and had an early double-bogey on Sunday before pulling himself back up. He ripped a shot into the woods on 18, but had a two-stroke lead and was able to bogey for the win.

McIlroy now has six major championships, the 12th-most all-time and the second-most among European players. Shoutout to Jersey native Harry Vardon, who won six Open Championships and a US Open between 1896 and 1914. (That’s Old Jersey, not the new one.)

McIlroy joins Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo, and Tiger as back-to-back Masters champs. Nicklaus gave himself the green jacket in 1966, but the protocol for repeat winners since Faldo’s win in 1990 has been for Augusta National’s chairman to hand the winner their own green jacket.

And no, you don’t get a second green jacket if you win twice. (Cheapskates! Raise the price on pimento sandwiches and get these guys another jacket!)

How did Rory pull it off on the back nine? I couldn’t tell you; Rory’s surge came during my annual Masters Nap. I dozed off with Rory tied with Justin Rose and woke up with McIlroy up by three strokes. Real golf fans get their Masters Naps in on Thursday or Friday but I’m a casual.

To find out what actually happened, I recommend this (surprisingly heartwarming!) recap over at Normal Sport, another newsletter that has SEO issues.

On Thursday night, the Pios were outshot 52-26, but beat Michigan 4-3 in double overtime. Here’s a rare 93rd-minute game-winner in a sport besides soccer:

On Saturday, they were outshot 30-15 by Wisconsin, but scored two third-period goals to beat the Badgers and win the national title.

As a huge Goalie Enthusiast, I’m putting this magical run on Denver goalkeeper Johnny Hicks, a freshman who went undefeated on the season — 16-0-1. Hicks saved 78 of 82 shots in the Frozen Four, including some absolute highlight reel stuff:

At 5-foot-10, Hicks was unwanted by the NHL and underrecruited. He was supposed to play at Tennessee State (!!!), which was trying to become the first HBCU with a college hockey team. The Tigers had trouble getting their program off the ground (they’re slated to start the 2026-27 season) and Hicks went to Denver as an apparent backup.

Names of Guys on Denver’s roster: Rieger Lorenz, Hagen Burrows, and most importantly: Boston Buckberger.

Boston Buckberger!

Incredibly, this is the second time Denver has won a national championship in this exact fashion in the last three years. In 2024, the Pioneers were outshot in the semifinal and championship game, and goalkeeper Matt Davis won Frozen Four MOP as the Pios took the title.

Anyway, I need somebody to explain what the heck is up with Denver hockey. Denver doesn’t have a football program and has never made the men’s Division I NCAA Tournament in basketball. The program is thousands of miles from most of the other hockey powerhouses, which are grouped in New England and the around Great Lakes. And yet they just can’t stop winning this thing!

Go ahead and watch that video above. When I saw 21-0, I assumed it was all Costa Rica outrunning the Cayman Islands’ players and tapping the ball into the back of the net. But they were scoring some bangers. By my count, eight of the 21 goals came from outside the 18-yard box. The 19th goal is an upper-90 curler from distance. Chinchilla was firing from long range and connecting.

That said, Costa Rica had 77 shots to zero, including 34 on target, so it could’ve been worse.

CONCACAF produced a heat map of the game and I’m not sure what I expected.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, this game tied the all-time international women’s blowout record; Costa Rica is now the sixth team to win 21-0. There was a 21-0 game in this same tournament four years ago when Haiti beat the British Virgin Islands.

(Unbelievably, two of those 21-0 games took place on the same day in the same stadium, as part of an Oceania regional tournament in 1998.)

I kinda hope nobody ever goes for the two-point conversion and hits 22. I hope dozens of teams win matches by exactly 21 goals.

Men, of course, are meaner: Australia beat American Samoa 31-0 in 2001.

I can’t find an official record for most goals by one player in a match, but Canada’s Silvana Burtini scored eight in a 21-0 game in 1998, so Chinchilla fell short.

Costa Rica wasn’t running up the score just to be rude! It is in a five-team group with Guatemala and three tiny island nations. Only the group winner will advance to the tournament in November. And with both Costa Rica and Guatemala sweeping their matches against the island nations, they’re tied atop the group at nine points. If their matchup is a draw, the group winner will be decided by goal differential, and Guatemala set a high bar by pounding the Caymans 13-0.

(OK, maybe Costa Rica didn’t need to score in the 93rd minute. That was unnecessary.)

Chinchilla is actually a somewhat common name in Costa Rica, whose former prime minister was named Laura Chinchilla. (Sports angle: Chinchilla is now one of the 100-ish members of the International Olympic Committee!)

Sadly, Priscila Chinchilla doesn’t rhyme in Spanish. But it DOES rhyme in English, and absolutely should be the name of an adorable Saturday morning cartoon character who runs a hotel for animals in the Andes.