Rory McIlroy feels so sharp as he cuts down Sergio Garcia again

“It felt normal, like a first or second round. It didn’t feel like the fourth round. I didn’t get ahead of myself. I just kept playing shot after shot after shot. What I am really proud of this week is following on from the Open with a performance like this. I said straight after the Open that I did not want any let down, I wanted to keep going and performing until the end of the season.

“It’s great to come to one of my favourite tournaments of the year and to perform like this I am pretty satisfied.”

His form is the best of his career, he said, even better than at this time two years ago, when he won the US PGA at Kiawah Island by eight strokes.

Not that he played flawlessly yesterday but he extricated himself from trouble with an assured putting stroke that limited the damage to just one bogey on the eighth.

“I had a couple of wobbles, rode my luck a little on the back nine, hit a couple of tree limbs and got lucky a couple of times,” said the 25-year-old, who collected £910,000 for his first victory in a World Golf Championships event.

McIlroy is sure to play a major role in Europe’s defence of their Ryder Cup crown at Gleneagles at the end of next month.

Naturally, Europe’s skipper Paul McGinley is delighted with McIlroy’s form and believes he could go on to dominate the sport in the same vein as 14-time Major champion Tiger Woods.

“There is no reason why not,” said McGinley. “That’s the best exhibition of driving I have seen from anybody in terms of length and accuracy. The course [at Akron] is very narrow off the tee and he was finding the fairway time after time at 340 yards. It’s great that Rory can hold his attitude where it is at now, it’s very much in the present, taking one week at a time.”

As for Garcia, the tournament was another case of what might have been. The world No3 had 16 birdies in the first three rounds but could only manage one in a closing 71, meaning he has now won just three times after holding the 54-hole lead on 16 occasions.

“I didn’t feel comfortable on the greens at all, with the speed of the greens changing quite dramatically after the [morning] rain,” he said.

“They were quite slow and I started second-guessing myself every single putt. The good putts I hit I misread and the bad ones weren’t going in the right direction either.”

With McIlroy’s win, Scott needed to finish in the top five to stay at No1 but his 71 left him at seven-under and in a tie for eighth. The Australian had led the rankings for 11 weeks.