WENTWORTH, U.K. -- The minutes ahead of a round on Wentworth's West Course allow plenty of time for contemplation. The putting green sits high on a hill with landscape views of the first hole and, beyond it, the grandstands which surround the 18th green, from the backs of which stare the 20-foot high faces of the leading contenders for this year's BMW PGA Championship.
The timid or distracted might easily let their mind wander and the walk to the first tee, and the wait there, is no different. Many first tees are a little detached from wider attention, a haven for the moments before the battle ahead, but not here.
Instead the famous clubhouse looms in the background, the galleries breathe down the player's neck, an MC creates extra buzz with loud reminders of past glories, and the first fairway looms on the hill, framed by deep woodland and thousands of curious onlookers.
When Rory McIlroy collected his scorecard, tightened his glove and twiddled his thumbs on that small rectangle of manicured grass this Thursday lunchtime he had every reason to feel a little wary of what lay ahead of him.
Eight times he had been there before. On five occasions he failed to break 74 and three of those efforts had left him languishing T100th or worse. If Rory were a racing car and Wentworth's West Course his race track, five times he had pretty much stalled on the starting grid.
Not this Thursday. This time he was up to speed in no time. A brilliant 5-under-par 67 was not quite sufficient to earn him the first round lead, but it is a career-low opening lap in this tournament and it's significance is possibly even greater: Only once before has he gone sub-70 on Thursday, in 2014, and the result that year? He won, one of only two top 20 finishes in his eight previous appearances.
Under gloomy skies he made the turn in 1-under-par 34, two bogeys applying the brakes, but the tone of the day had been set as he made birdie at the fourth, sixth and eighth holes. On the back nine there were no bogeys. Instead he continued to pile on the birdies at the even holes, four of them at the 10th, 12th, 14th and 16th.
His iron play, so often a weakness this season, was imperious as he five times dropped par-breaking putts from inside eight feet. "My wedge play was really, really good," he said afterwards. "It's a positive sign because I've been trying to improve that part of my game for 12 months.
Those short irons were capitalizing on lengthy and accurate driving. "Just heard on TV that Rory hit pitching wedge into 15 just now," tweeted Eddie Pepperell, as McIlroy played the 489-yard par-4. "That's incredible."
It was not a perfect day. At the 17th, the notorious par-5 with a right-to-left dogleg and left-to-right camber, like a country road with a high accident toll, he needed three shots to find the green and could only make par.
Then plumb down the middle of the final fairway, another par-5, his approach shot was disturbed by the flutter of a shutter. "If looks could kill," he was asked afterwards, "would there be a photographer dead out there?"
"I wouldn't say dead," he answered with a laugh. "It's a tough enough shot without noises at top of your backswing, but it's something that happens every now and again. I'm sure he didn't mean to do it."
The laidback response was a sign that he was satisfied with the work that had gone before. "It's a great platform," he said. "Especially here because there are some courses you feel you can chase and others you can't. This would be one of those and it's a little like Sawgrass in that respect. You can make life very difficult for yourself and that 67 is a great start."
Does it feel like 2014, he was asked, of the victory here which was the prelude to a summer that witnessed two major championship victories.
"It's close," he said. "It's not quite there. I'm not as comfortable with my game as I was back then, although I wasn't in great control when I won here. What happened is that I kicked on from that win and in that sense it's moving in the right direction."
On Tuesday he had discussed the vagaries of the Wentworth challenge. "It magnifies either side of your game," he said. "If you're playing well you can do great, if you're playing badly it really frustrates you."
In the first round he played well, very well, and in doing so has set himself up for a genuine tilt at a second BMW PGA Championship title.