Editorial: Rory McIlroy shows the patience to get back near the very top of golf

​The boy from Hollywood – and he was then almost a still a boy having only turned 22 – shattered records. His overall 72-hole score of 268 was 16 under-par and four shots ahead of any previous score in that tournament, one of golf’s four majors. He was thus beating the US Open best’s of both Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus, the sport’s two great names.

Within three years Rory had gone on to win the PGA Championship twice, and the Open Championship, and seemed set to equal the major title totals of Woods (15) or even Nicklaus (18).

But since that last major victory in 2014, Rory has failed to collect another victory in those four most sought after titles. In those early days of heady success, the Ulsterman made a series of missteps. He was seduced by huge sums of money to change his golf clubs, then blamed them on a poor run of form. He got into public online spats with critics.

Yet since then Rory has become one of the most interesting sports people in the world today. He is now 34, at the age when golfers find it more difficult to pick up trophies (although some have done so a decade older than that). But Rory, far from being one of those talents that soars early and then crashes back to Earth, has entered a mature and determined phase of his career. He is no longer motivated by top dollar and instead became the lead critic of those golfers who chased the Saudi dollar in the LIV tour. And above all, he has worked persistently at his game.

This has brought him to the brink of victory in the Masters last year, and in the US Open this year. He was a shot behind second place at yesterday’s Open, recovering from a poor first three rounds. This is a player who has shown the patience to get back to near the very top.