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But there are glimpses behind the glamour, revealing and reassuring. Such as last Christmas when his mum, Rosie, dislocated her shoulder and he and Gerry were lined up to prepare the turkey, or the rush home from doing a golf clinic at Carton House near Dublin to catch another episode of the television series 24. Or how he helped Holly to buy her first car, a Mini, and how he discreetly checked it for scrapes and scratches.

The openness is boyish and endearing, as if he has accepted that his talent at golf came with certain duties. Almost as if he has lived this life of fame before and has learnt how to deal with it. But what is there about Rory that is private? What is left for him?

“That doesn’t bother me,” he says. “If people want to know what I am thinking or what I have been up to, I don’t have a problem with that. I’m kind of in the public eye.

“When I was a kid, I looked up to Darren Clarke and saw him as a role model. Then I met him and that was better, because he didn’t seem so far away any more. There was a connection between us. And I’ve realised I don’t want to have that distance between me and the public.”

He was Gerry and Rosie McIlroy’s only child and when he looks at family albums, he smiles on seeing all the photographs of him with a golf club in his hands. He didn’t need to be at Holywood Golf Club or in the back garden where he practised his chipping. It was everywhere — on the beach, beside the pool on holidays, in the car. Always a golf club.

When he was five, he called himself Rory Nick Faldo McIlroy. The love affair would end only when Tiger Woods came and swept him off his seven-year-old feet. Smitten, it took him a long time to shake himself free and he reckons it’s been one of the great lessons of his first two years on the tour. “I was and still am a huge fan of the game. I grew up watching it. Sunday lunch was followed by my dad and I disappearing off to the range for two hours, then we’d come home and disappear into a room we called the ‘little den’, comfy couch, a TV, and be there until the tournament ended.

“That was our Sunday. So I was a huge fan of these guys — Tiger Woods, Ernie Els — and then you turn pro and you catch yourself watching them, admiring them, and you have to say to yourself you are trying to beat them, you’re not here to watch them. That took me a little bit of time.

“Now I play a lot of practice rounds on my own and I really focus on what I’m doing. If I apply myself properly, it will be good enough.”

To help their son’s golf, Gerry and Rosie McIlroy made sacrifices. Gerry took on a second job, Rosie went on night shift because it paid better and there was hardly a family holiday that wasn’t a trip to another junior golf tournament. At age 11, the boy understood that he was being given more than he could have asked for. “It was just 100% support and I remember saying to my parents, ‘If I make it, I will look after you, I will repay you, I will do whatever I can for you’. Now I can take them places, pay for the flights, pick up the hotel bill, it’s just nice for me to be able to say, ‘You’ve done enough, now it’s my turn’.”

He is now 20th in the world rankings and was the youngest to crack the world top 20. It is his belief that he is making more progress in his second professional year than he did in his first. “A year ago, I hired JP Fitzgerald as my caddie and ever since then, everything has started to take off. We made a pact that we would try to be in contention on the back nine in every tournament and, most of the time, we have been. JP’s very involved in my game, which is a great thing, and he’s not afraid to say, ‘We need to work on this, it’s not as good as it needs to be’.

“He used to caddie for Ernie [Els] and after I’ve hit a shot on the range, he’ll say, ‘You know, Ernie couldn’t hit that shot’. JP makes me think I might be better than I thought I was, gives me a lot of confidence.”

What the two iron at Carnoustie in 2007 screamed was brilliantly pure ball-striking. And it was not an illusion. From tee to green there are few, if any, who are better than him. So far, his putting has not been at anywhere near the same level. “If it was, I would be in the world top two or three, I am not afraid to say that. It is the part of the game I need to work on and if I could get my putting to the level of my ball striking, it will greatly increase my chances of winning more tournaments.”