McIlroy’s whoop spikes

Rory McIlroy’s heart rate jumped to 135 beats per minute after a wayward tee shot on the 18th hole Sunday at Augusta National, then fell to 105 before his winning putt. (golfweek.usatoday.com) Whoop, the fitness band McIlroy wears, showed his heart rate at 121 beats per minute on his recovery shot from the trees and 136 on the bunker shot that followed. It then dropped to 117 on his par putt and 105 on the short putt that finished the round. (golf.com) Those numbers stood out against a resting heart rate of 47 to 49 beats per minute during the week. Whoop also logged an 87 percent recovery score on Sunday, more than 24,000 steps that day, and more than 91,000 across the tournament. (golf.com) A wearable like Whoop tracks pulse, sleep, movement and recovery, then turns that into a daily readiness score. In McIlroy’s case, it offered a minute-by-minute readout of how his body reacted during the most pressurized hole of the Masters. (golfweek.usatoday.com) The data landed one day after McIlroy won the 2026 Masters on April 12 for his second straight green jacket and sixth major title. Augusta National said he closed with a 71 to finish at 12-under 276, one shot ahead of Scottie Scheffler. (masters.com) That victory made McIlroy the fourth player to win the Masters in consecutive years, joining Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods. The DP World Tour said it was also his 21st title on that tour and kept him at No. 2 in the Official World Golf Ranking. (masters.com) (europeantour.com) The same Whoop release also showed how sharply the week changed after the trophy ceremony. McIlroy’s recovery score fell to 7 percent the next morning after what he had predicted would be a “sore head” flight back to Florida. (sports.yahoo.com) What the device could not measure was the shot itself, only the body carrying it out. On the last hole of another Masters win, McIlroy’s pulse told the story: panic first, control next, then release. (golfweek.usatoday.com)