World no.3 Hideki Matsuyama arrives at Quail Hollow with flames coming off his putter after a course record 61 and victory at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone. Rory McIlroy, driving the ball as well as he ever has, is hunger personified as he seeks a first major in three years. Yet one narrative stands tall at the final major of the season, Jordan Spieth’s extraordinary assault on history.

Only five players have carried off all four of golf’s greatest prizes: The Masters, US Open, The Open and PGA Championship. Take a bow Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tiger Woods. The latter was the youngest to scale the mountain with victory at the Open at St Andrews in 2000 aged 24 years and seven months.

That bar is Spieth’s to lower in Charlotte. The remarkable Texan turned 24 in the week after his Open triumph at Royal Birkdale. That arresting five-hole sequence on the back-nine on the Sunday, when his unique brand of alchemy turned potential disaster at the 13th into a launchpad for glory, was the stuff of legend, placing Spieth at the heart of golfing lore.

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Somehow Spieth is able to keep the gathering frenzy at arm’s length. But then, when you are two over par for your round, carve your tee shot 100 yards right of the landing area with six holes to play, as he did at Birkdale, to re-ignite thoughts of last year’s epic collapse at the Masters, and still keep your head on straight, you begin to understand how it might be possible to retain a sense of proportion when all around are setting off flares.

“If I'm healthy and playing well, I play in 30 of them,” Spieth said in addressing his prospects of entering golf’s elite club via the PGA portal. “I believe I'll have plenty of chances to win them, but it doesn't have to be this year. If it's this year and it happens, that's great, that's another life-long goal that we've then achieved. Getting three legs of it is much harder than getting the last leg, I think, although I've never tried to get the last leg, so it's easy for me to say.”

As he pointed out in his media address in Charlotte, Spieth is still riding the wave of his Birkdale success. “It was only two weeks ago that I was able to get the third leg, and that's so fresh in my mind. I'm so happy about that that I can't add pressure to this week. I'm free-rolling. And it feels good.

“I'm about as free and relaxed at a major than I think I've ever felt. Maybe since Chambers Bay (2015), arriving at Chambers Bay after the Masters. It’s almost like I've accomplished something so great this year that anything else that happens, I can accept. That takes that pressure, that expectation away.”

ONE MAJOR AWAY

Spieth is never less than considered when giving a point of view, as assured with a microphone under his nose as he is when assessing how he might rescue his round after finding an unplayable lie in elephant grass at the foot of what passes for a small mountain in Southport. Neither is he without a sense of humour. “I mean, if we just continue with the same process, get the right breaks and driving ranges are in play, then I've got a good shot at No. 4.”

Three current players are anchored to the same career dynamic, Spieth, Phil Mickelson and McIlroy. Mickelson, a runner-up six times at the US Open and contesting his 100th major this week, is a salutary lesson in the need to take your chances when they present. Though he retains a notional opportunity of closing out his own grand slam, the advancing years diminish his prospect annually.

McIlroy has had three cracks already at closing the circle at the Masters since the last of his four major wins at the PGA Championship three years ago, finishing in the top ten each time, though without really contending. He knows exactly the terms of engagement under which Spieth competes this week. While a McIlroy win here would deny Spieth his shot at history and preserve his own chances of completing the trick first, the Northern Irishman recognises how a victory for his great rival would be a gain for golf as a whole.

“It would be huge for the game,” McIlroy said. “Tiger was able to do it at 24. Jordan has a great chance to do it at the same age, which is historic in itself. My chance doesn't come until April next year in the Masters, so I can play well but if Jordan plays better I take my hat off to him. He is great for the sport and I sent him a text after he won The Open telling him that..”

FORM

McIlroy’s form is trending in the right direction, tied fourth at The Open and tied fifth at Firestone, where his imperious driving tempted Spieth to identify him as his personal pick for success this week. Well, he does hold the course record, here, 61, and won his first PGA Tour title on this course, the Wells Fargo Championship, in 2010.

The temptation is to suggest McIlroy lay down the big stick in practice and instead wear the grooves off his wedges until he masters his short game to the same degree, the part of his repertoire that is preventing him lapping the field at this juncture. Or maybe being back on a course he loves is all the impetus he needs.

“I feel like I've been going for a fifth major for a long time,” he said. I think it's about time I stepped up and won one. I'm excited to go back to Quail Hollow. It’s one of those courses that I've had a lot of success on in the past. I've had a couple of wins and a few top 10s. It’s great to turn up to major championships knowing that you have a chance to win and to already have a couple of Wanamaker trophies. It would be nice to make that a hat-trick.”

Importantly after a stop-start season impacted by equipment change and rib injury McIlroy is at peace with his place in history and the state of his game, an equilibrium that comes with maturity. Perceptively he believes the media is more concerned about his lack of major success these past three years than he is, such is the need to maintain a buzz about the sport, to keep the headlines rolling along.

“I definitely don't want to be in the mind-set this week of wanting to make any type of statement or go out and prove myself. I'm past that point. I've proven myself enough over the last nine years of my career,” he said. “Obviously I wouldn't have won as much as I would have liked this year, and there's been a few components to that, injury-wise, changing equipment and stuff. It has been a bit of a transitional year. But I feel like everything's settled.”

This noble, old championship has lost a little of its lustre in recent years, struggled to command the attention, to project its identity in the way the others do. In this, the 99th edition, Spieth’s plotline has changed all that, bringing a new focus and heft.

A further boost came earlier this week with the announcement that the PGA will have a new slot in the calendar from 2019, when it moves back to May in a reshuffle to accommodate the Olympics and allow the Fed-Ex Play-offs to conclude before the American football season begins. As part of the restructuring, the Players Championship reverts to March, setting forth a golfing calendar that features a major championship in each month from May to July.

CONTENDERS

If not Spieth nor McIlroy this week, then Matsuyama is the man creating most noise. McIlroy showed how victory at Firestone can be the perfect tune-up for the PGA by going back-to-back in 2014, and how fitting it would be to have a maiden winner at a course hosting a major for the first time, doubly so since no golfer from the land of the rising sun has ever hoist the Japanese standard at a major championship.

Of course, if we have learned anything in the post Tiger Woods era, it is the depth of talent in the professional game has rarely been deeper with a plausible case for any in the top 20 to be made this week, and a good few beyond, including last week’s Bridgestone contenders Thomas Pieters and Zach Johnson, not to mention defending champion Jimmy Walker.

All but one of the world’s top 50 are in the field ensuring, as ever, a tense contest and a grand finale to the major season. To have reached this point in the piece and not yet spoken of world no.1 Dustin Johnson, Masters champion Sergio Garcia, US Open champion Brooks Koepka or rookie of the year Jon Rahm, is proof of that.