Kapalua, Maui, Hawai‘i – It could have been easier. Maybe it should have been easier.

But what would have been lost if Rory McIlroy had won the Masters with ease, if he had deployed all of his talents on those final nine holes at Augusta National and cruised to victory?

McIlroy cost himself a coronation, but he gained something more. He won in a manner that was fitting, authentic to him, and, ironically, more inspirational.

Many watch sports solely for displays of strength. That is athletics distilled to its basest form, competition to see who can run the fastest, jump the highest, or, in this case, shoot the low score.

But McIlroy has always wanted his pursuit of greatness to be about more than his physical capabilities. Even if it means opening himself to criticism, McIlroy has wanted his career to be a display of more than long drives and accurate iron shots. He wanted it to be a show of humanity.

And that is what it was on Sunday.

Stumbling, sometimes bumbling and imperfect as he came closer than ever to achieving the goal that has burdened him for a decade, McIlroy showed the resiliency that is his greatest gift.

And winning in this fashion is why he could turn to his 4-year-old daughter, Poppy, once the green jacket was on his shoulders, fight through the tears and say: “Keep coming back, keep working hard and if you put your mind to it, you can do anything.”

Poppy McIlroy had seen the fruit of her father’s eternal optimism minutes earlier, when he fell to his knees on Augusta National’s 18th green, sobbing so hard that it shook his body after that final putt fell and the journey was over. Even though he once led by five on Augusta National’s second nine, McIlroy needed an extra hole to finally win his Masters. His friend Brad Faxon, winner of eight PGA TOUR titles, called those final holes “the best two hours of sports” he’d seen.

McIlroy made plenty of mistakes Sunday, but he also met the moment enough times to finally prevail. He dumped a wedge into the water on 13 and bogeyed the next hole. Then, after great iron shots, he missed short putts for eagle and birdie that would have given him enough cushion for an easy win. He birdied No. 17, but then hit a wedge into a bunker on 18 to lose his one-shot lead on the last hole. On the first playoff hole, from a spot in the fairway not far from where he’d stood minutes earlier, he hit a wedge to 2 feet to finally defeat Justin Rose.

Tommy Fleetwood said, “It’s like nine holes of Rory McIlroy’s career in a nutshell.” Shane Lowry said the win came in “a very Rory McIlroy way of doing it.”

“No matter what happens, no matter how bad you feel, you just need to keep going, keep working hard, and know your day will come,” Lowry elaborated.

That message doesn’t come through as clearly if Sunday is a six-shot win, if McIlroy’s Masters is a display of gifts that only an elite handful can relate to. But everyone watching knows what it is like to imperfectly pursue a dream, lose hope and make mistakes. And McIlroy, ultimately, showed that it is possible to keep getting up and keep moving forward.

The record book would have looked more favorably at a big win. So would many who watched Sunday, unimpressed with a star who came so close to losing such a large lead. They will scoff at a seemingly simple wedge shot hit into the water, at the crucial putts that kept sliding by the hole and an inexplicable bogey from the middle of the 18th fairway.

Those people fail to appreciate McIlroy, his appeal and why his win, ultimately, resonated. He achieved greatness Sunday, becoming just the sixth man to win the career Grand Slam, but it was more than a display of great golf. It was a testament to grit, to resilience and proof that even the most debilitating setbacks don’t have to be the end of the story.

The way in which McIlroy won is why grown men wandered around Augusta National’s putting green in that bemused fog that comes when the shell of cynicism is cracked, exposing all those emotions and insecurities that we all work so hard to conceal. It was a communal experience where hope reigned, allowing everyone present to share in McIlroy’s success.

“My dreams have been made today,” McIlroy said during the trophy ceremony. He was finally rewarded for that resilience, much later than anyone would have imagined.

McIlroy won his first four majors between 2011 and 2014. He was just the fourth player in the previous century to win four majors at age 25 or younger. The others? Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Bobby Jones. Two of McIlroy’s majors were won by eight shots.

What followed was a decade of disappointment. He had 21 top-10 finishes in majors between his fourth major and today. Eleven of those finishes were in the top five. This is his 25th worldwide win since the start of 2015 but the first one that is a major. He has won three FedExCups in that span, and four of his six Race to Dubais (the DP World Tour’s season-long prize).

“Rory has been the best player in the world for 15 years,” Padraig Harrington said when reached by telephone Sunday. “People have come and gone in that period of time.”

He said earlier this week that the only downside of a career that long is the inevitability of hardship. Jones, the founder of Augusta National once wrote “that as long as one continues to play golf, the happy periods will be followed by sorrow.”

But McIlroy continued to find ways to improve, to keep getting better, to inch closer to this goal, even as the losses piled up at venues as varied as Pinehurst, St. Andrews and Los Angeles Country Club. They brought him to tears. He called himself golf’s “nearly man.” But he learned from those losses that life goes on. It was a lesson that allowed him to lay it all out there, to be honest about the pain and try again.

It was Augusta National that first caused him to cry about golf, when he shot a final-round 80 to lose a four-shot lead in 2011. Then he returned here annually, knowing it was the one place standing between him and his ultimate goal.

“It was a heavy weight to carry,” he said.

Lowry said the Masters “is all he thinks about. It’s all he talks about.

“I think, for him, it’s been everything.”

That’s why McIlroy described himself as “unbelievably nervous” on Sunday. His two-shot advantage over Bryson DeChambeau was his first outright 54-hole lead in a major since the 2014 PGA Championship, and his first time doing so at Augusta National since 2011.

His lead was gone after a double-bogey on Sunday’s opening hole, though. And he trailed after DeChambeau birdied the par-5 second. But McIlroy birdied the next two holes and DeChambeau bogeyed both. Birdies at Nos. 9 and 10 gave McIlroy a five-shot lead. Then the difficulties came.

There was the bogey at 11 and the inexplicable double at 13. He looked feeble on that swing, but was daring on 15, hooking his 7-iron shot around the trees and within 6 feet of the hole. He missed the eagle putt, though, and failed to make a 9-footer for birdie on 16. That meant he was still tied for the lead with two holes remaining.

But an 8-iron to 2 feet on 17 gave him a one-shot advantage entering the final hole. Even members of Scottie Scheffler’s immediate family were peering through the mesh of the grandstand by the 17th green, trying to catch the slightest glimpse of McIlroy’s ball. That wasn’t the deciding stroke, though. Not after McIlroy missed the 18th green with a wedge and made bogey from a greenside bunker to fall into a tie with Rose.

An epic collapse was averted, though, when McIlroy, standing two yards from where he was in regulation, hit his approach in the playoff stiff. Once the short putt went in, he fell to the ground in an emotional scene he described as an outpouring of relief.

“It's so hard to stay patient,” McIlroy said. “It's so hard to keep coming back every year and trying your best and not being able to get it done.

“There was points on the back nine today, I thought, … have I let this slip again? But again, I responded with some clutch shots when I needed to, and (I’m) really proud of myself for that.”

McIlroy’s resilience was rewarded at Augusta National, in a victory that we all can learn from.

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