It has taken me a while to work out what happened. Because there was just so much to it. At one stage, it felt almost like a fever dream: like we were seeing different parts of different rounds from down the ages. 

Sky’s coverage didn’t help. Microphones were all over the shop; Faldo argued with Wayne Riley about the live-action the Australian was standing next to; then told us all about obscure moments from his career to try and aid his (and only his) understanding of what was going on; and then entered into a bizarre oneupmanship conversation with Butch Harmon about who’d helped Rory more. Butch used the phrase ‘on the QT’ with the expression of a man laying two black Kings down on a table full of diamonds; Nick responded by saying he’d taken Rory away to the ‘Faldo Series’ as a young boy (which sounded weird whichever way it was supposed to come out), leaving Dame Laura Davies sat between them feeling uncomfortably obliged to profess she barely knew the man. The madness of the day had brought us to this. 

The key question came from Nick Dougherty, though, who hit the nail on the head: “You never experienced what Rory’s experienced in his career though, have you Nick?”

No. No one had. What Rory has had to go through is incomprehensible. Both Butch and Faldo did make sense when they agreed that this was better than what Woods had done in 2019. Because golf didn’t treat Woods as badly as it’s treated Rory. Sure, Tiger treated himself awfully. I mean, he really buggered himself up, but it was golf that has been so undeniably cruel to McIlroy. 

Rory isn’t playing the same sport that anyone else does. Because no one has a relationship with golf like Rory does. Golf has become the nastiest, cruellest, and most vindictive sport ever for Rory. And on Masters’ Sunday, he went toe to toe with it, looked it in the eye, and said, “No, this time, I win.” It was heroism of the highest order. 

This was the most extraordinary thing. The story was Rory’s but so many other cameos danced across our screen. DeChambeau, Conners, Reed, Scheffler, Day, even Schauffele and Zach Johnson dallied. Aberg’s bit-part was as curious as it was amusing: missing countless birdie chances and then producing the most comical of 18s. McIlroy chomped on a cereal bar having just birdied 17, but didn’t want to enter the deafening silence of a wait on the tee at 18; the delay was down to golf’s most beautiful Swede getting ugly around the green. He went this way and that. Chipped and putted with the touch of an arthritic gorilla and carded a 7. Thanks for that, Ludwig, see you next week?

The wait tangled with Rory’s showpiece finish and his limp bogey begot a sudden-death playoff. Step forward, Justin Rose: the unwanted dance partner. They met each other on the 18th like a pair of executioners responsible for beheading the other. ‘I’m so sorry’ their body language seemed to scream as a green-jacketed official revealed their fate. “So, you’ll both play this hole really well, given the huge amount of pressure you’re both under; it’s just Rory will play it better, hope that’s ok, Rosey?”

Of course, it wasn’t. If anyone didn’t deserve this final parade, it was Justin. Having led for a good part of the tournament and carded a final round which included ten birdies (Butch kept shouting this as if to try and spare him his fate), Rose deserved nothing less than a cold beer, a warm hug and the congratulations of millions. But no, he would have to accompany his great mate Rory up the play off hole and witness, at close hand, two of the finest shots ever hit. Not that Rosey’s were bad, but having come so far and battled this stupid game so ferociously and for so long, no one was going to prise the jacket out of McIlroy’s white-knuckled grasp.

The emotion burst forth like a burst water main. This wasn’t joy or triumph, but pain. Pain that had malignantly grown over time, each week that passed since he’d got so close in 2011 had coloured it a darker shade of purple, and now he vomited it up onto golf’s most manicured of greens. The puce facial contortions and unpronounced expletives belied how much he would have cried alone because of this fucking game. How deep the wound went, how much it had ruined his life, his love, and now, having faced it down, how he let it all out.

Heroism of this order lets out this sort of wail. The great man Bob Rotella (you knew he’d been working with Rory, didn’t you? Because everyone told you) owns the most important idiom: ‘courage is fear turned inside out’. To be courageous, we must at first admit we are afraid.

“I was so nervous…” Rory said afterwards, as if to drive home the point. Nervous because he knew every square inch of the agony that lay in wait for him if he made a wrong turn; knew every conniving tap of the keyboard should he lose again. Knew, but still took it on.

He heralded it all on 15. With a seven iron that was equally high, wide and handsome. Like the shiniest of broadswords, swinging and arcing towards the green in a shot that was as good as any that have been struck. He ran after it, he might as well have been on horseback, and yet his face never flickered as he watched it canter towards the pin. Because this was just a precursor, not the end, and he knew it.

The final thrust of this extraordinary day was just three feet long. Perhaps a little shy of a full pace of Rory’s champion gait. But every step along this tortuous journey has been as tough as the next, and no step less important than the other. The final stride was a weird formality. Struck with the assurance of a man who knows pain and is now done with it. This was the final stop: the place he told us was the end.

Augusta has served up some fair before but nothing as cathartic as this. And my god, do we need ‘catharting’ right now. As the Georgia sun set behind a curly-haired Northern Irishman in a brand new piece of apparel, it seemed as though one of golf’s greatest wrongs had been righted. We just need the rest of the world to fall in line.