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Shane Lowry stayed behind at Augusta National to congratulate his close friend Rory McIlroy after the 36-year-old claimed his second Green Jacket in a row. McIlroy secured back-to-back Masters titles, holding off Scottie Scheffler and Cameron Young while also surpassing £9.6million in career earnings at the Masters, more than any other player in the tournament's history.

Lowry and McIlroy have been close friends for a long time, having represented the European Ryder Cup side together on numerous occasions, and Lowry remained close by at Augusta National to be amongst the first to embrace the six-time major champion.

Lowry did so the previous year when McIlroy completed his career Grand Slam, without his parents present in the crowd. This time around, however, Lowry slipped down the leaderboard and out of contention after carding an eight-over 80 in the final round to deny him a much bigger payday.

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"Good things come to those who wait maybe," said McIlroy on what he learned from Augusta National.

"Just keep going. I find myself in a very similar position today to where I was in the last round last year, two or three behind, but I played solid golf after that.

"I was 4-under for an 11-hole stretch there, which is what I needed to do to give myself that cushion going up the last. I just tried really hard to focus on myself. I thought, if I could get to 14-under, I thought that everyone else would struggle to get to that score. So that was the number I had in my head. I got to 13 on the last and had that two-shot cushion.

"I didn't quite get there, but yeah, just keep going. Keep your head down and keep it going. If you put the hours in and work on the right things, eventually it will come good for you."

McIlroy went on to suggest that Augusta National's secretive nature leaves far too much room for mental demons to take hold.

"It's very - you have a lot of time to think," added McIlroy. "You're out there a long time. There's a long time between shots. There's a long time between rounds.

"I think it is - of all the big sports, I do think it is the most mental. It's the most challenging mentally. I think it's hard to stay in the same mental space for four days in a row because even - I was in a great mental space, like say on the 13th tee shot, for example.

"All of my practice rounds up here, the weeks leading into it, Monday, Tuesday, great. I hit two left on Wednesday off the tee. Then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, I didn't sniff hitting the fairway.

"So it's just there are little things that happen that just start to make you second-guess things. It's just very hard to stay on the right -- not in the right spot mentally, but the same spot mentally for a long period of time."

This article first appeared on Mirror US.