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Rory McIlroy's year began the year as the star attraction with music blaring and lasers flashing in a room at Abu Dhabi to celebrate the No. 1 player in golf joining Nike's stable. It ended last Sunday with a bogey on the ninth hole at Sherwood with hardly anyone watching.
An off season never looked more appealing to him.
"It's been a long season, a long stretch," McIlroy said after signing for a 70 to finish 11th in an 18-man field at the Northwestern Mutual World Challenge. "I'm excited to put the clubs down for a little bit, have a few weeks' rest and get after it at the start of the new year."
He won't have to worry about getting used to new equipment as he has spent the better part of nine months doing that.
A year ago, McIlroy was the No. 1 in golf and coming off another record win in a major -- an eight-shot victory in the PGA Championship - and added FedExCup Playoff wins and money titles on both sides of the Atlantic by closing his season with a win in Dubai.
Although it looked as if he would stay there for many years it only lasted three months.
There were equipment issues, a product of changing everything at once instead of slowly working the swoosh into his bag, as Tiger Woods did a decade earlier. He changed management companies, which ordinarily is a seamless transition unless the split is ugly.
As things stand McIlroy is scheduled to be in a courtroom in Ireland not long after the Ryder Cup next year.
So yes, this is ugly.
According to reports in Irish newspapers, he split with girlfriend Caroline Wozniacki at least twice, maybe three times. Which proved confusing as the Danish tennis star was at Sherwood all week, an ever-present smile as she followed him.
McIlroy, for all his brilliance inside the ropes, is refreshingly honest when it comes to his golf and often self-deprecating. He was talking earlier in the week about playing casual rounds with friends, noting that he had more of those days than in previous years.
"Had more weekends (off)," he said.
He has failed to make the cut five times, inlcuing Open Championship. Another was at The Honda Classic, where he walked off the course after 26 holes out of frustration, blaming it on his wisdom tooth.
He didn't win a tournament until his 24th start, two weeks ago at the Australian Open and so ends the year at No. 6 in the world.
"It's been the first year I've had to put up with scrutiny and criticism," McIlroy said. "You just have to believe in what you're doing and not let it get to you too much. I let it get to me a few times."
The toothache was one example of that. McIlroy conceded a week later at Doral that all the hype translated into more pressure he put on himself to perform, and he snapped. An honest answer. He said he would never do it again. So far, so good.
More than the golf was the inspection outside the ropes.
"All the other stuff," he said. "I don't care what people say about my golf. It's when people start digging into my personal life, that's where it starts to annoy you. Whether it's Caroline, the management, all that should that should be no consequence to how I play my golf."
That's a part of celebrity he still hasn't mastered.
Tiger Woods went through his first "slump" -- everything is relative when it comes to Woods -- at age 22 in his second full year as a pro. He won only two tournaments. He lost to Nick Price in a playoff at Sun City. He lost to Mark O'Meara in a 36-hole final at the World Match Play Championship. About the only off-course issue he faced was the GQ article that quoted him telling racial jokes.
"As far as battling a slump, that's just part of playing golf," Woods said. "You play golf long enough, you're going to go through it."
The great ones emerge. And the great ones don't stay in slumps for long.
McIlroy has headed to his Florida home to start his vacation. He'll eventually wind up in Melbourne to watch Wozniacki in the Australian Open, and then go to Dubai to start preparing for a new season that will begin in Abu Dhabi.
It's already shaping up as important season.
