One year to the day when he briefly hid his face in his hands and a hundred camera shutters clicked on cue, Rory McIlroy looked down from the same interview desk at Wentworth, now master of all he surveys.
It’s genuinely hard to believe it was only a year ago when McIlroy came in to face the music, his first press conference since the announcement of the abrupt termination of his engagement to Caroline Wozniacki.
It’s still pretty hard for those who witnessed his obvious emotional turmoil that day to believe he went out and won the BMW PGA Championship four days later.
That catharsis completed, however, it’s not at all hard to believe what has happened since. Six more tournament wins, two majors, the most dominant single spell of any player in the sport since Tiger Woods’ second salad days of 2006.
“This is what kick started everything, really,” he pondered. “This win, it gave me a lot of confidence to go on into the summer and do what I did.
“It was a real catalyst. I felt like I was playing well before that, but I wasn’t able to turn good finishes into wins. It was my first tournament of the year where I got myself sort of into contention and to play a back nine like I did last year, it did a lot for my confidence.
“Who knows, if I hadn’t had this tournament, things might have been a little bit different. But it definitely was the start of a great 12 months.”
That was perhaps a little reference to McIlroy’s previous dislike of the West Course, and the belief a year ago that he was considering not coming to the flagship event anymore; in the same way as Ian Poulter, Sergio Garcia and Henrik Stenson, frustrated at their lack of success, have simply struck it from their schedules. That all changed for McIlroy, obviously, and he’s back to defend this week.
“I guess it’s the European Tour’s equivalent of The Players Championship over in the States,” he said. “But this is a tournament that I wasn’t sure I’d ever win in my career just because of my relationship with the West Course, but it was certainly nice to win it last year.”
McIlroy has barely looked back since, if you’re willing to forgive him trailing Jordan Spieth at the Masters, and his thunderous wins at the WGC Matchplay and Quail Hollow just last weekend have kind of put that in perspective.
Yet even smiting the field in South Carolina last week, powering into a lead with a Saturday 61 and then motoring away to an eight shot victory on the weekend, doesn’t mean he’s taking all this for granted now.
“I don’t feel I’m unbeatable, that’s for sure,” he said. “Golf is a very fickle game and it can humble you quite quickly.
“Do I intimidate other players? I feel like my name now carries a certain weight on the leaderboard. I don’t know if you call that intimidation, but I feel players see my name on the leaderboard now, it might mean a little bit more than it used to.”
But all those wins going away mean only as much as the ones where he comes from behind seven strokes back of Thomas Bjorn here last year or nips over the line by a stroke.
“I’ll take any wins any way I can get them, whether it’s by one shot or in a playoff or by seven shots like last week. I feel like now I’m a player that can win all different sorts of ways, which I’m happy about; I can be in contention and gut it out with a few other players or separate myself.”
McIlroy, in truth, looks slightly weary. He had an obviously prominent role in the Tour’s gala dinner on Tuesday, a major-sized PR stunt with Nike on Monday, and barely enough time to beat jet-lag, although he promised “the adrenalin will kick in again on the first tee”.
There’s also his hosting of the Irish Open next week, a major deal for him, as a further distraction. He admitted his pro-am performance yesterday with Manchester United greats Paul Scholes and Phil Neville, and One Direction (not a description of his golf) star Niall Horan “didn’t feature many birdies”.
Perhaps a better winning shot might be Justin Rose, a play-off loser here in the past and pretty determined to add the title to his “bucket list” after coming to Wentworth to watch since he was eight years old.