SIDELINE CUT: IF THIS year's census throws up some weird figures and conclusions, blame the golf. The chances are that half the country completed their forms last Sunday evening while simultaneously gripped and appalled by what was happening to Rory McIlroy on the manicured fairways of Augusta.

You didn’t have to venture very far last weekend before you heard someone talking about McIlroy and most people I encountered seemed intent on spending Sunday night watching his coronation as champion of the most mythologised golf tournament of them all. (If you can sell a garish green jacket as something to be coveted, you have done your job).

Whatever the consequences of the startling desertion of form the Irish man suffered during his final round of the Masters, the effect upon gauging the demographics of the Irish population is the least determinable. But the chances are that several Irish people, marked a ‘minus 10’ for the number of rooms in their house and more than one father must have ticked a ‘triple bogey seven’ in the box for their children.

There is something about the Masters. Even those of us who see the tournament as the high altar of golf’s general weirdness – the overwhelming whiteness of its best practitioners and its crowd profile, the insistence by so many fans that they go for the knee-length chino short and sun-visor combo, those little foldaway seats that they lug around the course with them; the tiresome yelling of “Geddindahole” throughout the Tiger Woods era, the preponderance of argyle; that fact that blatantly out-of-shape golfers can still thrive at the game and the staggering money on offer for tournaments that nobody has ever heard of – can’t help but fall for the Masters.

To begin with, the Masters is like the official announcement that summer is just around the corner.

Also, there is something soothing about spending three nights in a row studying what is basically the most beautiful garden in the world. Then you have guff about tradition and ceremony – the jacket, the dinner menu, the lack of prize money, the fierce protection of sexism, Amen Corner, the weather; virtues upheld by Peach State old timers who look and sound like they have doing their laid-back courtly thing since the heyday of Robert E Lee. The Masters is a sports tournament with character.

So when an Irish man leads this show for three days running, everyone in the old country is going to sit up and take notice. The psychological effects of McIlroy’s dramatic implosion have already been exhausted and, it seems, overstated. When things began to go from bad to unbelievably horrible on the 10th hole on Sunday night, most of us were probably worried for the county Down man.

The Masters is one of those sports events that has the power to make the real world fall temporarily away, so when Peter Allis began to sound distressed and despairing, it was hard not to fear that McIlroy was going to walk out of Augusta, into the nearest bourbon joint, order one neat and tell the barkeep to keep ’em coming. For life. When McIlroy momentarily buried his face into his forearm, it was easy to fear he might never lift a club again and become a cautionary tale in the world of sport.

On the television, they kept talking about “scarring” and about Greg Norman. They began to revise the remarks made by other golfers on the Saturday afternoon, implying that rather than praising the Irish man, they were each just adding their own nugget of pressure. They made it sound as if elite golf is filled with calculating, hyper-competitive cold-blooded bastards instead of the collection of pastel-wearing cheerful oddballs who we all know and love.

Meanwhile, all the other young guns – Jason Day and Charl Schwartzel – continued to play with a degree of composure and enjoyment that seemed callous given the extent of McIlroy’s misery and which must have made thousands of Irish viewers revise their earlier opinion that Day is a really smashing young fella. Of course, it was unreasonable to expect them to sabotage their own chances of winning just because McIlroy’s went pear-shaped but during the heat of the moment, it seemed the decent thing to do.

Only Tiger Woods was recognisably himself during that slow-motion last nine holes, sulky and at times imperious and looking, despite the early blast, as if his heart isn’t really in it anymore; as if he knows that even if he emulates and then eclipses the Golden Bear’s haul of 18 Major titles, it won’t make his life any better or any worse.

If someone could have blown a whistle when McIlroy was on the 13th and had everyone start the round again, the chances are that McIlroy would have sailed through.

Instead, he had to endure the misery of those last nine holes. We had to endure it with him. Few sports leave its best players as exposed or as helpless as golf did McIlroy for that hour. As he explained afterwards, he began to second guess himself and once that happened, he was finished.

The snap transformation from the young player who had nonchalantly led the field for three days to the bewildered figure who closed out the tournament was a frightening glimpse of how easy the best golfers make it seem and of how quickly that illusion of easiness can slip away. And for millions of other Sunday morning hackers, it must have given them a brief glimpse of how they might look and play if they were somehow transported into the middle of the Masters tournament.

However, fears about the long-term consequences for McIlroy were short-lived. In fact, they began to melt away as soon as he offered the sheepish grin as he walked away from the 18th hole. By the time he posted the photograph of himself and Masters champion Schwartzel winging their way to Malaysia for another tournament, it was clear McIlroy could not alone cope but teach some perspective to others.

What happened in Augusta has changed the public perception of his ability to translate his gift into Major prizes. But only McIlroy can truly know whether the experience has actually diminished his potential to claim the best prizes or whether, when he finds himself in such a position again, he will draw on it to help guide him home. But as he said himself: “There are worse things that can happen in your life.” It seemed like an eminently sensible response to a bad afternoon on the golf course.

The thing about McIlroy is that he has managed to climb to the pinnacle of world golf through work and brilliance without ever really sacrificing his right to have a good time.

McIlroy lives the kind of public, localised life that Tiger Woods never could and has managed the trick of stepping seamlessly from the fairways of golf tournaments televised around the world and into the Friday night rugby crowd heading to Ravenhill. That feat alone has been impressive.

He has years ahead of him during which he can leave his stamp on the game.

The smart bet is that last Sunday night at the Masters has done his golf game no long-term harm – but it may well play havoc with the census results.