After teeing off the year in front of sheikhs, all ready to rattle and roll in Abu Dhabi, Rory McIlroy signed his last card to the sound of silence in an exclusive California suburb.
Soon after the final putt dropped on the ninth hole in Sherwood Country Club for a bogey, McIlroy fluffed up his curly locks for the umpteenth time, puffed his cheeks, and looked for someone to blame.
‘I don’t care what people say about my golf, it’s the other stuff,’ he said with a sigh.
The other ‘stuff’ is any number of things. Take your pick: equipment problems, legal wrangles, on-course behaviour, emotional issues, private life gossip.
They are the lines of interrogation a two-time major winner and a world’s number one golfer, with a former tennis world number one as his squeeze, can expect when his golf game has gone further south than Tom Crean.
As he returned to his Florida pad to relax for a few weeks, McIlroy should reflect that what people really want to talk about, more than any other ‘stuff’, is his golf.
Like the star-spangled play which won the US Open in 2011 and US PGA in 2012; which inspired two Ryder Cup wins for Europe; and propelled the kid with the jaunty step into every nook and cranny where the Royal and Ancient game is played.
Not the golf which saw him walk off the course midway through a tournament he was defending in March; angrily bend a club out of shape at the US Open in June; and admit to being ‘brain dead’ at The Open in July where he missed the cut, and several fairways, by miles.
Reach for the skies: Rory McIlroy won his first Major at the 111th U.S. Open in Maryland
And not the golf in California last week where McIlroy trailed in 13 shots off the pace in an 18-man end-of-term jamboree run by Tiger Woods
For all that McIlroy may protest, his golf in 2013 was a good walk spoiled, right from the moment he was unveiled as Nike’s new poster boy in a reputed $200million 10-year sponsorship deal only to promptly miss the cut.
Rolled out alongside Woods in the Arabian Gulf to a backdrop of lasers, lights and rock anthems, McIlroy endured a forgettable year in which he changed clubs, balls, management teams, lost his world number one ranking but clung defiantly to his girlfriend, Caroline Wozniacki.
That he finally won a tournament, the Australian Open — thanks to Adam Scott’s icy putter in the stretch — failed to apply a tourniquet to the bleeding for the County Down phenomenon.
From being the A-list movie star in January, the guy first on the red carpet, he finished with a California cameo, virtually lost in the trees at Thousand Oaks.
As he fought lawsuits, and his new Nike driver, McIlroy lost his sparkle and the game of golf, his theatre of dreams, became a drag.
As the off-course spats dragged on, McIlroy popped up at various tennis tournaments in support of Wozniaki, and stuck to a relatively light playing schedule.
His critics, Nick Faldo and Johnny Miller among them, were outraged that McIlroy wasn’t in the gym at dawn, wasn’t out on the range until dusk; wasn’t seen to be working hard enough to get his game back on track.
But they missed a key point. Even when at his flashy best at Congressional in the US Open in 2011, and Kiawah Island in 2012, where he set records in majors each time, McIlroy has always found time to chill.
Because McIlroy is not obsessed, truly, madly, deeply, with golf the way Faldo was, or Woods and Pádraig Harrington are.
It ain’t easy, as the likes of Sergio Garcia, Henrik Stenson, Ian Poulter, and Dustin Johnson can confirm. Majoring in majors has become a specialist subject that few can crack. Consider this. Since Harrington won his third major, the US PGA in 2008, there have been 16 first-time winners of major championships.
Only two golfers have won more than one major out of the last 20 played — Mickelson and McIlroy.
Woods, arguably the greatest golfer the game has ever known, has had nine top 10 major finishes since 2008 but hasn’t been able to close the deal.
Just like Tiger, McIlroy’s career will be judged on the majors, not by rank and file tournament wins, by Order of Merit success, Fed Ex Cups, career earnings or by product endorsements.
McIlroy is due to return to competitive golf in Dubai at the tail-end of January before the World Match Play Championship tees off on February 19 in Arizona.
He has much to look forward to. The Masters, where he was in the mix for 36 holes last April, a US Open return to the iconic Pinehurst, where the run off greens are tailor-made for his imagination and touch, The Open at Hoylake.
Then there is the Ryder Cup in Gleneagles in September, a sporting duel he once famously labelled an exhibition.
In Medinah in 2012, McIlroy brilliantly lit the blue touch paper of a stunning final-day revival by leading from the front, and Paul McGinley, the European captain, will be desperate to see his talisman — the new Monty — qualify for the team on merit, and in the mood.
Golf needs The Kid to recapture his verve in 2014. When he does, all the other ‘stuff’ will take care of itself. In one fell swoosh.
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