My golf clubs have played Augusta. How about that for a claim to fame? Sadly I was not swinging them. That would be my Telegraph colleague, whose name came out of the Monday media draw to play the Masters course with Sunday's pin positions. Yes I lent young Oliver Brown my clubs, while I sat in the car park transcribing Colin Montgomerie's column for the Daily Telegraph. Oliver shot 95 off the members' tees.
Monty's subject was inevitably, Rory McIlroy, whose collapse on the final day of the Masters captured the imagination worldwide. I had lunch the following day at the Augusta municipal golf club. There was no talk of the winner, Charl Schwartzel. It was McIlroy's experience that struck a chord.

The locals seemed to empathise more with the sense of loss and crushing disappointment. They thought McIlroy a 'fine, young man' who had dealt with his disappointment with grace. They speculated about how anyone could cope with such an obvious emotional disintegration.

We are about to find out. McIlroy begins the restoration work at the Malaysian Open in Kuala Lumpa this week. He meets the media before he goes out. You can guess what the first question might be about.

McIlroy is learning the meaning of sporting mettle. His defeat was not a result of technical failings but of an inability to deal with the intensity of the competition. He had no strategy for coping with the pressure of Masters Sunday. Some will see this as an inherent flaw that cannot be corrected. They will point to the Open Championship at St Andrews last year where he blew up similarly with an 80 in the second round after carding a 63 on the opening day and conclude the condition is terminal.

Others argue that both episodes are a consequence of age. McIlroy is 21 and lacked the necessary experience to respond. The inference being that McIlroy will learn from the defeat and emerge a stronger, better golfer.

He is not the first to shoot a big number on the last day when leading the Masters. Sam Snead, who shot 80 in 1951 and came back to win a year later, and Ben Hogan, who shot 79 in 1952 and won in 1953, are fabled examples. Maybe theirs is the template McIlroy will follow. My own view is that he is too good to repeat these youthful failures. He was a boy on Sunday. Someday soon he will grow into a man at a major championship.