The Inside Story Behind Rory McIlroy’s Surprising Masters Watch

Rory McIlroy had one hell of a 2025.

He won the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am for the first time and picked up his second career wins at both the Players Championship and Irish Open. Most impressive of all, he won the 2025 Masters, capping a career grand slam and making him just the sixth golfer in history to do so, and the first since Tiger Woods a quarter-century ago. Finally, McIlroy ended the year by leading Europe to an underdog victory over the U.S. at the Ryder Cup.

McIlroy has been an Omega ambassador for over a decade, and he is often seen wearing a De Ville Tourbillon in Sedna Gold, one of the brand’s most expensive watches, at well over $200,000. But for the golfer’s most visible moment last year, his victory at the Masters, McIlroy wore a different Omega watch, and a surprising one at that: the Speedmaster Professional “Silver Snoopy Award” 50th Anniversary. He then wore it again to hoist the Ryder Cup trophy.

Harry How/Getty Images

McIlroy’s choice of the Snoopy always seemed curious to me. It’s not a new watch that Omega is trying to push, having been released in 2020. It’s a space-themed watch that has absolutely nothing to do with golf; Omega tends to keep its golf-themed watches in the Seamaster Aqua Terra line. And it isn’t a collaboration with McIlroy, who does have his own special-edition Speedy in the Omega catalog.

The choice felt deliberate, and I wanted to know why. So when the opportunity arose to interview McIlroy on behalf of Omega’s recent partnership with TGL, the primetime golf league that McIlroy cofounded in 2022, I decided to ask him why he went with the Snoopy to celebrate his career grand slam.

Photo by Johnny Brayson for Gear Patrol

A real watch guy

“I wanted a Snoopy for a while, and I probably got that watch about, I don’t know, maybe two months [before the Masters],” McIlroy tells me. “I feel like when I get a new watch, I wear it for quite a while.”

What McIlroy is describing here is what watch nerds like me refer to as the “honeymoon phase.” Basically, when you get a new watch, you’re so enamored with it for a period of time that it rarely leaves your wrist as the rest of your collection collects dust. It sounds like that’s what happened to Rory.

I also think it’s interesting that he said he’d “wanted a Snoopy for a while.” The Snoopy is notoriously difficult to get a hold of, and is one of the only Omegas to garner Rolex-like waitlists. So the fact that McIlroy implies he also had to get one makes him feel pretty relatable to watch enthusiasts while also bolstering the Snoopy’s reputation as a watch worth waiting for.

Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

McIlroy goes on to describe some of what he likes about the Snoopy in particular.

“I’ve always loved the Speedmaster … I’ve got quite a few Speedmasters,” he says. “I like the fabric strap. I like the blue; I wear a lot of blue. It’s just a fun watch. It’s obviously a watch that’s quite unique, and I was wearing blue that day, so I thought it went well with the outfit I was wearing.”

Again, McIlroy is speaking my language here. Noting a few details about why he likes the watch and matching the watch to his outfit are both things I do when selecting a watch to wear to a significant event.

Omega

“Maybe it doesn’t go quite as well with the green jacket, but I didn’t want to be too presumptuous,” he jokes. “But yeah, it’s a fun watch, and I think it was a fitting watch for the occasion.”

No disagreement there. The Snoopy, with its beloved cartoon beagle on the dial and animated caseback featuring Snoopy flying through space in a lunar module past a rotating Earth, is literally probably the most fun watch on the market. Given that McIlroy sure looked like he was having a great time celebrating his career grand slam, I’d say that makes the Snoopy quite fitting for the moment indeed.

So what did I learn? Rory McIlroy wore the Snoopy to celebrate his Masters victory for three reasons: Because he had just gotten it recently and was still in the honeymoon phase, because it matched the blue shirt he wore that day, and because it’s just a fun watch that he enjoys.

Sounds like a watch guy to me.

Omega

Omega Speedmaster “Silver Snoopy Award” 50th Anniversary Edition

Specs

Case Size	42mm
Movement	Omega Cal. 3861 manual-wind chronograph
Water Resistance	50m

• $11,900 at omegawatches.com

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