From the Peek Cabin to Butler Cabin.
It only took 14 years for Rory McIlroy.
But, lord above, in true McIlroy fashion, he did not make it easy. By the time he rolled in that birdie putt on the first play-off hole to beat the irrepressible Justin Rose, we had all been through the wringer.
He tossed his putter behind him, fell to his knees and emitted a primal scream into the Augusta turf that had caused him so much pain – the release of emotion would not have looked out of place in a Copa Libertadores final, whatever about the buttoned-down surrounds of golf's most manicured property.
The grand slam was his. He has finally slain his Georgian dragon. Life from here on out will be a bed of azaleas.
Augusta National has been McIlroy’s cathedral of hurt this past decade and a half, and even in his most glorious hour, it extracted its pound of flesh as the 35-year-old mixed the sublime with the ridiculous.
Before Rose there was Bryson DeChambeau, the man he was due to duel and avenge last year’s US Open collapse. There were three two-shot swings in the first four holes as an unforgettable Masters Sunday took no time to warm up.
After a seesaw front nine, DeChambeau was in the rearview mirror and he had a five-shot lead, but McIlroy had yet to face his greatest foe. Rory McIlroy.
He inexplicably found the creek from 86 yards on 13 and carded his fourth double bogey of the week. Now he was in a dogfight with a 44-year-old Englishman with a pedigree around this course.
It was all so easy an hour earlier when he slung a shot through the trees on to the seventh green. His shoulders shaking as he laughed with caddie Harry Diamond suggested he was over his rocky start, as ghosts of Masters past threatened to come out of Pines again. The double bogey on one was a shocker to begin with.
The back nine was Dr Jekyll and Mr McIlroy.
Conservatism doesn’t sit well with his maverick nature and taking three wood on 14 resulted in a bogey.
A hole later he is playing a ludicrous hook from under the trees to leave himself a six-footer for eagle. His confident walk after that shot seemed like it could be the exclamation point we all needed to calm our nerves. Then he misses the putt.
The majestic approach on 17 is converted for birdie but then he plonks his second in the bunker at 18. No 2022 heroics this time and when he misses the par putt we’re headed for a play-off.
History delayed. But then he plays 18 again and hits three perfect shots. Crucially one less than Rose.
Finally a fifth major and the slam. Finally he exorcises the ghosts of 2011.
In the meantime we’ve had four majors, proceeded by a decade-long drought, 24 PGA Tour wins, three FedEx Cup titles, three DP World Tour crowns and 120 weeks at World No. 1.
He is comfortably one of golf’s most successful global stars, but every April he has been reminded of his great 'failing’. His inability to join golf’s immortals who have achieved the ‘grand slam’.
Every 20-30 minutes during McIlroy’s rounds at Augusta we’re reminded that the Holywood man had 10 unsuccessful attempts at joining Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods as the only players to win all four majors.
Funny, the same graphic does not appear on screen quite so often when Jordan Spieth competes at the PGA Championship or Phil Mickelson takes another run at the US Open, a tournament he has finished second in six times.
But there was always something utterly compelling about McIlroy’s Augusta flame-ups. He’s had seven top-10s in his 16 visits, but so many of those came after heroic, pyrrhic weekends that followed poor Thursdays.
His best effort before tonight was finishing second to Scottie Scheffler in 2022 after a blistering closing 64 almost had the unflappable Texan flapping.
But when we talk about McIlroy at the Masters the primary material is always 2011.
Fearless, 21 and leading by four shots heading into the final round, viewers around the world got to witness a brutal and scarring collapse down the back nine.
Sat on our couches, it was like rubbernecking on a painfully slow car crash. By the time the nightmare was over, with his head resting in his arm, on the verge of tears, the curly-haired phenom had lost his innocence.
The nadir was the par-four 10th, when his tee shot careened off a pine and ended up between two lodges- named for the Peek and Berckmans families - never before seen on the TV broadcast, the commentators marvelling at the location of his second shot as a stunned McIlroy peaked out from behind a pine tree.
Having led by one shot at the turn, by the time he reached the 11th tee and faced into Amen Corner, he was back in seventh after carding a triple bogey.
That fearsome three holes left its mark and Charl Schwartzel celebrated his victory on the 18th hole while McIlroy was preparing to take his second shot. Ten shots behind the South African in a tie for 15th.
That most bruising of endings was actually just the start. The start of a narrative that would sustain us for a week each spring.
Ironically, after his best start to a PGA Tour season, where he won the Pebble Beach Pro-Am and the Players, for once the melodrama discussed at the press conference was Bridgerton rather than McIlroy’s mental barriers. The word ‘drought’ was not even mentioned.
Well, the floodgates have opened. As he hugged his daughter Poppy and cried into her shoulder, it could not be more clear what this meant to Ireland’s greatest ever golfer.
As Scottie Scheffler slipped that green jacket on his shoulders, he could only feel a huge weight lift.
