I think about Rory McIlroy a lot. It's my job, of course, but I find myself thinking about his swing, his fitness, his wedge game and if he's mentally capable of tackling what no mortal ought to tackle alone.
His game, we were always told, was transcendent and that calcified in 2014 to the tune of four total wins, three straight wins, two of them major championships.
McIlroy got his "feels", as his buddy (and fellow Nike compatriot) Tiger Woods would say, in the middle of the summer and there's nothing inhibiting us from thinking those feels are going anywhere anytime soon.
So while looking at the future is fun -- quite fun, actually -- I want to look back one more time at the season McIlroy has nearly touched off.
The DP World Tour Championship kicks off this week in Dubai -- a tournament McIlroy is heavily favored to win -- and we need to figure out where McIlroy's season ranks among the historically great seasons of European golfers.
Here's what I came up with.
We should start with Europeans who have won two majors in a single season. Here's that list (post-1900):
Nick Faldo (1990)
Padraig Harrington (2008)
Rory McIlroy (2014)
Wait, that's the entire list?!
It is.
Faldo's 1990 season was illustrious. He beat Raymond Floyd in a playoff at the 1990 Masters and then lit the British Open field on fire at St. Andrews, winning by five strokes. He didn't win a single other PGA Tour or European Tour event, though he did finish T3 at the US Open.
Harrington won consecutive majors in 2008, much like McIlroy in 2014. First he won the British Open by four over Ian Poulter and then beat Ben Curtis and Sergio Garcia by two at the 2008 PGA Championship at Oakland Hills. He added a top 10 at the Masters as well.
McIlroy of course tacked on a WGC win at Bridgestone and the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth which is the European Tour's version of the PGA Tour's Players Championship.
Oh and he also won that trophy they hand out in late September to either the United States or Europe after three days of team competition. Neither Harrington nor Faldo can lay claim to that in their years above.
So where do we turn for some competition for McIlroy in the historic sense? For that we look to the record books to see what the number is for most European Tour wins in a season.
This is difficult because WGC events haven't been around for very long and the European Tour only started counting non-British Open majors as events on its schedule in the late 1990s.
Still, we can look to Nick Faldo's 1992 season for context.
In 1992 Faldo won six times -- tied with Seve Ballesteros, Lee Westwood and Colin Montgomerie for the European Tour record for wins in a season.
He collected the Claret Jug and won the World Match Play Championship at Wentworth back when it actually meant something. He finished top five in two other majors.
It was a tremendous season but it still doesn't hold up to McIlroy's 2014.
Before we move on it should be noted that Seve Ballesteros' 1983 season (three wins, one major, two other top 10s at majors) and Martin Kaymer's 2010 season (three wins, one major, two other top 10s at majors) are also on the list of best ever for a European.
| Best seasons for a European golfer | ||||
| Name | Year | Majors | Other wins | Major top 10s |
| Seve Ballesteros | 1983 | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| Nick Faldo | 1990 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
| Nick Faldo | 1992 | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| Padraig Harrington | 2008 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
| Martin Kaymer | 2010 | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| Rory McIlroy | 2014 | 2 | 2 | 3 |
But to me McIlroy stands alone. In 40 years when Charlie Woods is winding down his career I think we'll look back at McIlroy's 2014 and say "that's when the dam broke."
McIlroy contended this week in Dubai that he's not done growing.
"I always feel like I can get better, even if the improvements are not that noticeable," said McIlroy.
"You might not be able to see them. They might not be obvious improvements. They might be little things I've tried to improve, and I feel like I've gotten better at. But there's always things that you can do to try and get better."
McIlroy's career has been launched into orbit and like this ProTracer look from the 2014 Open, I'm not sure when (or if) it's ever coming down.
Prodigious talent mingled with historic performance in 2014 and what we were delivered was, in my mind, the greatest golfing season from a European golfer ever.
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