Ignore the tour calendar – the pro season really starts in January

If the British golf season starts in earnest when the clocks go forward and we catch our first glimpse of the flowers at Augusta National, then the professional season traditionally begins with the first sighting of Tiger Woods.

Nowadays, you can add Rory McIlroy to that category too.

Last week’s Abu Dhabi Championship represented, to me, the first meaningful golf since the autumn, and was the most enjoyable event to watch and follow since the PGA Championship.

You can do what you want with your wrap-around seasons and 2018 campaigns that actually begin in 2017.

The actual season is still pleasingly defined by a combination of two factors: one is as arbitrary as the Gregorian calendar and the other is the timing of the opening major of the season.

We humans are strange creatures and the beginning of a new year seems as good a time as any to insert a full stop between what has happened and what is going to happen.

So it is, for me at least, that there is greatly renewed interest at this time of year in watching McIlroy’s putting stroke or DJ’s bunker play.

Rather than watching the top players churn out top 10 after top 10 in the FedEx Cup, it now feels like they may have spent some time improving a weakness in their game ahead of another tilt at the majors.

It’s fresh, it’s exciting and it feels like the golf has a renewed meaning.

Tiger Woods

I truly marvel at the PGA Tour’s ability to put on high-class events week after week, and what a job they done at spreading the stars around from one week to the next. Parts of the season are like one big relay race: it’s like Rickie tags Phil tags Jordan tags DJ and so it goes on.

That makes every week watchable, but curiously a by-product is that the top players go a long time without all appearing in the same event, especially at this time of the year.

Abu Dhabi is about as good as it gets in terms of star-packed fields until March’s two WGCs.

That said, Torrey Pines will be essential viewing from Thursday as we welcome back Tiger to the regular tour.

His early-season form will make such a difference to the way this season shapes up. A win would surely be too much to ask – I’ll take him being competitive, moving freely, swinging with poise and chipping something like he used to.

Tommy Fleetwood

For entirely different reasons, it was clear that Tommy Fleetwood’s win last weekend meant even more than it did in the same event a year ago.

Arguably, the 2017 win confirmed his status as a big-time player but as Europe’s No. 1 he has a lot to live up to this year.

A couple of modest weeks and the pressure could have built up – the player hears the whispers that he is a one-season wonder and is quickly affected.

A couple of weeks off over Christmas and Fleetwood obviously feared that the magic might have worn off. Not a bit of it. That back nine of 30 on a final day when it was, unusually, an achievement to break par was special.

I know where Fleetwood is coming from – it’s a remarkable thing to win an event against a field of this class. But to do it again, when you are expected to contend, is another thing altogether.

Of all his achievements in the last 12 months, the quality of his ball-striking and evenness of his temperament when going out in the penultimate group of the US Open at the weekend stands out.

Perversely, even more impressive for me was his performance at the Open when he finished 27th.

He arrived at Birkdale as the hometown favourite on the back of his Erin Hills exploits. His fame wasn’t quite at Beatles proportions but it was the next best thing. I was convinced it would be too much for him and he duly began with a 76. It would have been so easy to add another one on Friday and exit stage right but he did nothing of the sort, finishing 69, 66, 70, rising all the while, to climb into the top 30. That said a lot.

Now he’s ranked 12th in the world and nailed on to make his Ryder Cup debut in France. Onwards and upwards.