The wind, what little there was of it, finally seemed to be blowing Rory McIlroy’s way again at a major championship.

He had a share of a four-shot lead with one round to go, and though he was not quite playing at home in the home of golf, McIlroy, a Northern Irishman, certainly must have felt as if he was playing on his terms and on his turf as he basked in the roars of the record crowd and walked his jaunty walk over the undulating fairways and double greens of the Old Course.

McIlroy, at 33, has both charisma and game, with an elastic swing that provides him the sort of power usually associated with more muscular men and allows him to pound drives to faraway places.