A glorious new dawn for Rory McIlroy this week, who for the first time in over a decade, enters a major championship not weighed down by the baggage of agonising near-misses.
Safe to say, McIlroy will never again play under the extreme stress which he had to withstand on that Sunday in Augusta.
It showed on that notorious miscue on the 13th, when he skewed his doddle of a chip into Rae's Creek, while the commentators were wittering on about how much of a cinch it was.
As he waited for Bryson DeChambeau to finish out on the 72nd green, while he had his four-footer to win coming up, McIlroy, his shoulders slumped slightly, looked a picture of angst and racing thoughts. The closest a sportsman has come to resembling Michael Corleone before he had to shoot that chap in the restaurant in The Godfather.
That putt, to no one's great surprise, trickled by on the low side of the hole, triggering thousands upon thousands of groans from couches back home.
In classic McIlroy fashion, once he'd blown it, that was cue to go and win it, hitting a magnificent approach in close on the first play-off hole. The subsequent putt mercifully found its way into the hole and then it was onwards on the emotional walk towards Jim Nantz and chairman Fred in the Butler Cabin.
Having awoken from the nightmare of his recent major championship history, the widespread assumption now seems to be that McIlroy will really cut loose and have some fun.
We have a precursor of this phenomenon in the form of Ireland's first modern major champion, these days to be found on X offering ingenious golf tips to the middle and high handicappers out there.
Padraig Harrington's first Open Championship victory at Carnoustie in 2007 was a torturous experience to watch. Leading on the last, he proceeded to nearly blow it in almost Van de Velde-ian fashion, pulling his second shot into the stream short of the 18th green. "The only time I ever felt embarrassed on a golf course," he's said on many occasions since.
Harrington's subsequent recovery pitch is an example of that truth known to all golfers, that your most exquisite shot usually comes after you've made a complete horlicks of the previous one.
Even so, the eventual double bogey seemed costly enough to be going on with, handing the initiative back to Sergio Garcia, who arrived up the 18th in the final group.
Garcia, whose own major championship demons exceeded those of Harrington, offered the Dubliner a reprieve with a missed par putt on the last.
Harrington won the resultant four-hole play-off, albeit only after playing for a nerve-jangling bogey on the last which he had arrived at with a two-stroke cushion.
Twelve months later, it was night and day at Birkdale. Harrington played with serenity and confidence of a player who knew his hand was stamped with the mark of 'major champion'.
He breezed by old man Greg Norman early in the fourth round, nonchalantly pulling out a fairway wood on the par-five 17th with the tournament still slightly in the balance.
While Peter Aliss in the BBC commentary booth was expressing grave doubts about the wisdom of the shot choice, Harrington slammed his approach up to gimme range, putting the tournament to bed with a hole to spare.
As Harrington himself was wont to say at the time, golf at that level is 90% mental.
The prevailing narrative now is that McIlroy will be touched by a similar air of serenity, particularly around a course which Jordan Spieth was overheard calling 'Rory McIlroy Country Club' last week.
McIlroy won his first PGA Tour event at Quail Hollow back in 2010, two days shy of his 21st birthday. He just sneaked inside the cut-line and then shot 66-62 over the weekend to blow past future sledging partner Phil Mickelson on Sunday.
McIlroy has won there on three further occasions, in 2015, 2021 and 2024, as well as losing out in a play-off to Rickie Fowler in 2012.
He has 10 top-10 finishes in 14 starts around the course. One of the four exceptions, it's worth noting, was at the 2017 US PGA Championship, when Justin Thomas, coming into a decent burst of form himself, claimed his first major.
At 7,500 yards long, it is generally held to be a 'driver's course'. Ergo, this is McIlroy's terrain. Although one would anticipate that Mr DeChambeau would also find it much to his liking.
McIlroy may be right at home there, but the golfing architecture gurus are said to be distinctly underwhelmed.
The US PGA Championship, traditionally the major with the most watery USP, has made a habit of selecting some fairly bland courses lately, in amongst some crackers.
The 2024 tournament produced a humdinger of a climax but from a purists' perspective, and for those who revel in US Open style carnage, gave us the kind of monotonous birdie-fest you can watch every other week on the PGA Tour.
The only thing penal and unforgiving about Valhalla last year were the police officers prowling the perimeter of the venue.
Justin Ray of the Athletic noted at the time that the combined score to par last year was -214, the lowest score in US PGA Championship history by an astonishing margin.
Hunter Mahan offered a wonderfully scathing verdict on the course this week, observing that Quail Hollow is "like a Kardashian. It's very modern, beautiful and well kept. But it lacks a soul or character."
The US PGA Championship trumpets its claim to offering the strongest field in golf and they're putting their best foot forward over the opening two days, grouping McIlroy in a blockbuster trio of Scottie Scheffler and defending champion Xander Schauffele.
Scheffler, who will hope to emerge this week without getting his collar felt by the cops and another mugshot taken, registered his first win of 2025 at the Byron Nelson with a score of -31, and that was with a bogey on the penultimate hole.
The world number one, notwithstanding his jittery four-putt on the 72nd for his first Masters win in 2022, has justly earned the reputation as the game's leading mentality monster. His last major championship victory in Augusta in 2024 was as devoid of drama as McIlroy's was stuffed with it.
Certainly, had Scottie gone four strokes clear coming to the 11th hole, Jessica Fletcher could have laid down her pen and toddled off to bed, skipping the Butler Cabin bit.
Scheffler spoke in touching and unabashed sincerity about his faith after his second Masters win, reassured by the belief that his "victory was secure on the cross." Another reminder that, while Bob Rotella may be good, he's no Jesus.
Shane Lowry, possibly still reeling from a gut-wrenching near-miss last week, tees off in a high-profile group, alongside three-time winner Brooks Koepka, currently marooned in competitive irrelevance on the LIV Tour, and one-time wonderkid Rickie Fowler.
Lowry cracked the top 10 in the world rankings for the first time this week and is generally playing as well as ever. But that may be scant consolation after tossing away an opportunity for a fourth PGA Tour victory at the Truist, two bogeys in the final three holes handing the tournament to Sepp Straka.
He came close to writing himself into the history books by giving himself a putt for a 61 in Valhalla last year but he failed to sustain his challenge on Sunday, which turned into a shootout between Schauffele and Bryson DeChambeau.
There is no shortage of Irish involvement, with Seamus Power, tied-ninth in Southern Hill in 2022, earning a spot this week, while LIV defector Tom McKibbin was offered a surprise invite.
Completing the quintet is Harrington, the first European to win the US PGA Championship since the Second World War back in his peak year of 2008 - the PGA having been the most Yank-centric of the majors throughout the second half of the 20th century.
But the focus of the world will be on McIlroy, still in the post-Masters glow and now unburdened by the suffocating weight of history.
