The father's voice cut through the noise along the rope line at the fourth hole, pleading with strangers to let his young son glimpse the man they'd all come to see. For four days, similar requests had been met with shoulder shrugs and territorial shuffling,

The roar from the packed grandstands around Royal Portrush's 12th green was deafening. Rory McIlroy had just rolled in a long eagle putt, and 30,000 Northern Ireland faithful erupted as one. It was, McIlroy would later say,