A brutal truth. It’s likely that many of us who jumped the Rorytrain last night aren’t Proper Golfers – and most won’t be Golf Experts. But the magic and the drama of the event and the tremendous watchability and charisma of the chief protagonists – some of them, in the case of the actual venue, almost surreally preened – made us cling to it. It was ‘and then some’. It was ‘oh my goodness’. It took even us frauds into palpable wonder and trauma, beyond any planned investment in time or support. We were, I suppose, captured.

I’d prefer to give McIlroy himself (himself) credit for this. As opposed to the oodles of baggage, or the scissored and colorific perfection that is Augusta. Yes even us part-timers had a strong sense of the storyline underpinning: the Heartbreaks and the Breakdowns and the cruel romance. But it was mainly the sport that made this Masters – the golf shots. The ridicu-wedge blasted high before finding the seventh: lols, even the perpetrator, SuperMac, was visibly gobsmacked! The screeching curler around the trees, on the 15th. The magnificent, nerveless iron to the 17th. The quietly accumulating brilliance of Rose.

Throw in the tortured but also fading wildness of DeChambeau and we may already have all we need for epic sport. But we also had Aberg again being coolly thrilling tee-to-green. We had other Significant Locals weirdly marginalised. Overpoweringly though, we had that stirring, even gut-churning absence of certainty around the fella ‘destined to be central’.

I’d been coaching cricket for eight hours – 12 til 8pm – before rapidly piling the kit into the boot and flicking on Five Live. Practically the first words I heard were describing, in rather shocked tones, how the ‘lead had changed hands’. EH?!? McIlroy had gone from being two ahead to one down, in the first two holes! There were swear-words. I wasn’t sure whether to drive more quickly or pull up in a lay-by and sob.

By the time I’d cranked up the Sky Sports live feed, Rory was not only back in front, but stretching his lead. The Madness had started early. Faldo was bleating about DeChambeau’s daft bullishness – ‘you can’t hit irons like that, it doesn’t work’, or similar – and McIlroy looked spookily at ease. (I’ve just read a loada stuff about a) his sports psychologist and b) his American opponent noting that the Northern Irishman said nothing to him, all round… which may be interesting, or not). Then that shot on the 7th happened. It ticked all the daft bullishness boxes, being preposterous and risky and irre-bloody-sponsible, but Rory made the fekker. Superhuman ain’t in it – or rather it is, because it was utterly beyond the realm of the human. Brutally smashed. Ridiculously finessed. A bloody outrage.

That kind of statement should be the end of something… but not here. Not with this bloke. There were impossibly jarring errors – notably that flunk into the beck at 13, planting a 7 (seven) on his scorecard – and the pressure-slippage between 11 and 14 which engineered a very temporary three-way tie on the leaderboard. (Macker/Rose/Aberg). Godlike ripostes on 15 and 17 ripped a hole in any Here We Go Again theories before the universe crumpled back into them on the 18th green, as the Chosen (or Persecuted, or Unfortunate) One missed a shortish putt. Rose’s 10 (ten!) birdies on the day had won him a shot at glory. Fair enough. I nearly went to bed.

The crowds: where do we start, as a soft-leftie Brit, with the crowds at Augusta National?

We know who most of them vote for. We know 12% of the blokes will shout ‘get in the ho-o-ole!’ when the ball is tracking a mile westward. We suspect for a number this event may be a lifestyle choice more than a communion with a cherished ball-game. In short I confess they may not be my natural territory. But hey, mostly they were wonderful. Huge and engaged and powerfully supportive. Mostly in lurv with Rory, of course – possibly even when there were Americans in contention.

Somebody’s probably writing a thesis on why the roaring was so lung-bursting and so heartfelt, for the foreigner.* It can only be a combination of The Personality, The Story, and The Actual Golf. Whatever; let’s toast that crowd and that noise and zone back in to the mesmerising quality of some of the play. Rory McIlroy played a few dodgy shots in that final round. Of course he did. But his response and renewal, under the crushing weight of failure and disappointment and expectation, was incredible and heroic. Non-golf people will have been electrified and touched by his genius and his guts.

We somehow got to where we somehow knew we’d be. A play-off. Mercifully we had just the one hole to complete. Both players played it pret-ty immaculately, with solid drives and beautiful irons. McIlroy won it because his putt was short and straight and his opponents was longer. That, as Faldo might have said, is how golf works.

*Given where the U.S. is, maybe there’s a little hope in there somewhere?

Image from Belfast Live.