Hoylake High

Garcia, meantime, is eschewing the bitter little asides which used to accompany his close calls in majors. There was a typical example on the Saturday night of the aforementioned 2007 Open in which he lost out to Padraig Harrington in a play-off.

A pressman had started a question - presumably about Garcia’s inability to finish off in majors - with the words, "I don’t want to rekindle any bad memories but ..."

At that, the Spaniard had intervened to say, "Well don’t."

After a pause, he had added, "What’s wrong with you? I’m only 27. Imagine how many years I have. I have 80, maybe 85 majors to come. It’s not like I am 45-years-old."

At Hoylake, where he was seven shots back going into the last round, Garcia was endlessly positive, endlessly fair. He was justifiably proud of himself for having given his last round 66 his best shot - and that was what mattered most.

"Sometimes you play well but there is just one better player and Rory was better," he said.

There are girlfriends who can hold a player back but, in Katharina Boehm, Garcia has found a genuine golfing soul-mate, one who slips into his very close family with no questions asked.

She and Sergio’s father, Victor, will regularly join forces to play against Sergio, and both happily confided that they have found a formula in which they have the beating of him.

When Garcia won the 2013 Thailand Open, Katherina, who was caddying for him, saw her main role as one of keeping Sergio’s spirits up.

Yet when Katherina needed a bit of consoling after Garcia had lost out to McIlroy at Hoylake, Garcia was the one to stay positive.

At 34, as he said to the TV men, he has grown up a bit. "All this week has helped me," he said – and yes, he was referring to the business of winning majors.