Gavin Cooney reports from Augusta National Golf Club

“SO, WHAT ARE we all going to talk about next year?” said a giggling and green-jacketed Rory McIlroy from the walnut dais of the Augusta National press conference room a year ago. 

And certainly the golf world descends on the Masters this week deprived of its favourite question, for McIlroy has now completed the epic quest with which we were all so swept along. 

So if Rory’s Masters career is now in its postscript, what will we talk about this week? 

And Rory, we have some bad news for you: we’re still going to be talking a bit about you. Quite a lot, actually.

Chiefly, can McIlroy become only the fourth man in history – and first since Tiger Woods in 2002 – to successfully defend the green jacket? And, more pertinently, will he have the appetite to do so? 

McIlroy’s staggering victory here last year kindled talk of a ‘Rory Slam’; with the man now unburdened by his long wait for a fifth major title, he would now easily re-assert his dominance over the other pretenders to the throne who acceded during the McIlroy interregnum. 

But instead McIlroy was uncompetitive while acting surly and aloof, striking us as a man in the grip of an existential crisis, struggling to adjust to the long littleness of a life no longer dedicated to chasing the Masters. The crowds at September’s Irish Open provided some kind of jumpstart, however, and once the Ryder Cup swung round, McIlroy was back once again, blazing with that fabulously chippy intensity of his.

But what of this week and this year?

McIlroy gave an interview to the Guardian last week in which he insists his competitive edge has not been dulled. 

“I still want to achieve things, I still want to win things,” he told Ewan Murray. “This isn’t the end. If I can produce the golf shots that I needed to produce down the last few holes at Augusta, feeling the way I was feeling then, I am pretty capable of doing anything in this game.” 

He has spoken about other motivating factors, too. He likes of the idea of chasing a Grand Slam for his caddie Harry Diamond – JP Fitzgerald was on the bag for his first four major wins – and he is one more major victory away from tying Nick Faldo on six and settling what few arguments still remain as to who is the greatest European golfer of them all.

McIlroy has been guarded on putting a number on his overall major title target, but Pádraig Harrington told McIlroy’s biographer Alan Shipnuck that McIlroy let slip that the target is nine. 

There is also the bare fact of competition, which is baked into McIlroy’s bones. Whatever on-course languor a man has cannot endure the sight of Bryson DeChambeau or Patrick Reed pumping their fists and rallying the crowd. 

But can he really carry this edge into this week?

It is a statement of the blindingly obvious to say that McIlroy has never approached the Masters in a happier state of mind. On the recent Amazon documentary about McIlroy’s Masters win, his father Gerry revealed that Rory was never quite himself during the weeks leading to the Masters; that he would be edgy and jumpy and in that heightened state of emotion to which the rest of us can relate when a doctor’s appointment or a work deadline is looming. 

This time around, the lead-in has been something to enjoy. McIlroy is determined to be seen as a good champion in the eyes of the men in green jackets, and so has been on site since last week, watching the final round of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur and the kids’ Drive, Chip, and Putt tournament, wearing not a sponsors’ logo on his hat but the letters ANGC. 

He has been generous with his time to autograph hunters all weekend, though you suspect he is quietly enjoying it: a custom has developed whereby only past champions can sign their names within the Masters logo on the official tournament flag. This is McIlroy’s first year of carefree scribbling. 

Having already played a practice round with the club chairman Fred Ridley earlier in the week, McIlroy played another on Sunday with his father. He will step back into the press conference room on Tuesday afternoon before hosting the champions dinner later that evening. Neither Tiger Woods nor Phil Mickelson will be there for their respective personal reasons, and this is the first edition of the Masters at which neither will compete since 1994.

Their absence heightens the sense that McIlroy is suddenly among the grandees of this event. The power and swagger of his play on the course keeps McIlroy young in the popular mind, but the green jacket has had the curious effect of ageing his look off the course, or at least making him look all of his 36 years. 

Perhaps the reason so few players have successfully defended the Masters is down to what the tournament demands of its champions in the days preceding the tournament. No event better honours its former winners than the Masters, although it comes at the cost of the reigning champion’s time and energy. 

McIlroy will certainly swing more freely on Thursday than he has ever swung before around this place, and he will never again in his career find anything more difficult than winning the Masters for the first time. 

This fact does not mean winning for a second time this week would be anything other than a towering achievement.