This will read like fiction to some, especially those familiar with how the 2013 season quickly unravelled for Rory McIlroy.
After starting the year with trumpets blaring as world No 1, a season of setbacks, lawsuits, management strife and more sloppy play than he would care to remember followed. With only weeks left in the year, though, the light finally came on with a strong finish in Dubai and a victory at the Australian Open.
So, in a reverse and perverse sort of way, he was looking for some carry-over and continuity as he started the new year at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship on Thursday with a 2-under 70.
“I wanted to keep that going,” he said of his finishing kick, “and so I didn’t take many days off.”
After arriving in the UAE two weeks ago for his now-traditional pre-season preparatory work, McIlroy’s daily regimen sounds like the stuff of a military training camp.
He was in the gym by 7am, where he would lift weights for 90 minutes. He would hit balls on the range, usually at the Els Club’s Butch Harmon School of Golf, from 10am until 1pm, then play nine or 18 holes.
Some days, he went back to the gym and worked out for another 90 minutes before calling it a day.
Ah, the glorious life of a professional that few fans ever see. In American football, they call those gruelling double sessions “two-a-days”.
“I felt like I got a lot out of it,” said McIlroy, who this week dropped to seventh in the world.
That was evident in the way he was striking the ball at Abu Dhabi Golf Club. Playing alongside the world No 5 Phil Mickelson, who had spent much of the week extolling the virtues of his new driver, it was the Northern Irishman who put on a driving exhibition not seen hereabout since Formula One world champion Sebastian Vettel left town.
While Mickelson struggled to keep the ball out of the cacti and bougainvillea, McIlroy was mashing drives over distant targets that few players dared to challenge.
On the 16th, he took on a corner bunker that required a 300-yard carry and cleared it with ease. At one point, after a woman in the gallery fawned over another soaring tee shot, McIlroy turned to her, shrugged and said with a smirk, “It was OK.”
It was several degrees, and several yards, better than that, really.
Pressed for a comparison, Mclroy said he had not driven the ball this well since the end of the 2012 season, right around the time he won the PGA Championship to claim his second career major and was the world No 1.
On a course set-up that might have been the most punitive in tournament history, McIlroy hit 10 fairways, and the misses were not significant enough to hurt. While he missed four birdie putts inside 10 feet, he did not have a bogey on the card.
“I guess to start a year with a round that is bogey-free is never bad,” he said.
Mickelson was bogey-free for 17 holes. Unfortunately, he was birdie-free for all 18 and finished with a 73.
“It was a little tentative, played little cautious,” Mickelson said. “I didn’t trust my swing too much.”
Mickelson hit his new driver six times, which he was crushing in practice, and found one fairway.
Consequently, he spent much of the day grinding for pars, including 17 in succession – a streak not often linked to the mercurial Mickelson.
“My swing doesn’t feel where I want it to be,” he said.
McIlroy, conversely, displayed all the vestiges of his old swagger. His chin was up, his shoulders back and his posture suggested that 2013, which included a missed cut in Abu Dhabi, is part of the distant past.
If he drives the ball as well as he did in his opening round, the wins should start piling up.
For McIlroy, the prototypical power player, it begins and ends with the howitzer in hand in the tee box.
“It’s huge,” he said. “It’s the foundation of my game. If I drive the ball well, I play well and my results are good.”
His future bride’s results were positive, too.
McIlroy rose at 3.30am to speak on the phone with fiancee Caroline Wozniacki, who was in action at the Australian Open as McIlroy was on the course.
She won 6-0, 1-6, 6-2, and McIlroy’s agent informed him of the match’s final tally on the back nine.
“Hmmm,” McIlroy said. “Weird score.”
That was not the case for McIlroy, whose numbers run over the past three months is looking increasingly familiar.
“I feel the benefit of ending last year well,” he said. “And then starting off this year with a lot of hard work.”
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