Clearly this was a truly staggering performance at the US Open by Rory McIlroy.

He had made a complete and humiliating hash of the last nine holes at Augusta in April and to come back at the very next serious test and destroy the field takes an uncommon talent.

Not since Tiger Woods completed his astonishing 12-shot coming-out at Augusta in 1997 has a player stamped his presence, and his potential, on the game with such authority.

This was an illuminating Open for another reason.

The five major championships decided since Phil Mickelson's win at Augusta in the spring of 2010 have been won by non-Americans. McIlroy's countryman, Graeme McDowell, was the defending champion at Congressional this week; two South Africans, Louis Oosthuizen - (pictured above) with the British Open - and Charl Schwartzel - at Augusta, where he took Mickelson's Masters crown - got in on the act and then the German, Martin Kaymer, won the PGA Championship.

And, of the top 10 players this week, only two were Americans - and little-known ones at that. Robert Garrigus and Kevin Chappell have one PGA tour title between them and are hardly household names or the backbone of a Presidents Cup team that will be at Royal Melbourne in November.

Australian Jason Day's fantastic performance will perhaps be lost among the McIlroy coronation but to add another second place to his week at Augusta is an indication that he may be the most likely contemporary rival for the brilliant kid from the north of Ireland.

This is a great thing for the game. For the longest time Americans ruled its top levels but Severiano Ballesteros showed his fellow ‘foreigners' what was possible. Ballesteros was the first generation of player to grow up playing the more difficult-to-use bigger golf ball and this foreign emergence harks back to the critical decision to change the ball played professionally outside of America.

Players from around the world also grow up playing a wild variety of courses and conditions whereas Americans play courses organized with the sameness of a McDonalds hamburger or a Borders bookstore. Everything has to be consistent and ‘fair' and, almost by definition, it is a recipe more likely to produce players who are very good at one form of the game.

Now that the rest of the world's best players have learned the American game, they are ahead of it because they have the extra dimension learned on the links and heathland of Britain, the hard and fast running courses of the Melbourne sandbelt and the variety of courses the European tour travel to as they spread their tournament reach around the globe.

Ultimately, it is the American tour membership who controls the set-up of the courses in America and if you polled them, 98% would cite ‘fairness' as an important part of the game.

It is generally not seen as important in courses outside of America. For one reason, it costs a lot more money to condition courses to a level of ‘perfection' demanded by members paying exorbitant fees - by Australian standards - and to a standard expected by tour players.

This week started with no clear favourite. The next major championship is the Open at what looks like being a very hard and bouncy Royal St Georges on the Kent coast.

In one astounding week, McIlroy has made himself the clear man to beat at The Open. It is far too early to consign Tiger Woods' career to history or to assume he will win few more important titles but here maybe we have seen the next truly great player.