The incessant narrative of the golfing year will mean Jordan Spieth returning to action this week, when the Masters and US Open champion attempts a successful defence of the Australian Open. As Spieth re-appears on the competitive scene, Rory McIlroy begins downtime which will stretch until the European Tour reaches Abu Dhabi in late January when the American will feature alongside him in the field.

The Northern Irishman’s plans for 2016 can wait; he is of a mind to think through the professional year which concluded on Sunday with success at the DP World Tour Championship. Given all that had come before, there seemed an extra significance to this McIlroy victory, which brought him his third Race to Dubai championship in four years.

Don’t dare mention to McIlroy, though, that his sign-off win was a shot across the bows of Spieth, or the world No2, Jason Day. “I’m not sending a message to anyone,” McIlroy said. “I’m just going out there to play my best. I had goals and objectives which had nothing to do with Jordan Spieth or Jason Day.

“I wanted to win the Race to Dubai, I wanted to beat Danny Willett over the week and I wanted to beat Andy Sullivan. Whether it’s Jordan Spieth or Jason Day or anyone else, I have certain objectives throughout the year and it doesn’t matter who it is, I just want to play the best golf possible. I know if I do play to my best or close to my best then I am able to win big tournaments.”

McIlroy has firmed his stance regarding the ankle injury he sustained in July and which so disrupted his year, most notably meaning he missed the Open. Football matches with his friends will continue; but the timing will be different.

“You definitely can’t be complacent,” McIlroy added. “I had a big lead in the world rankings and you see Jordan and Jason play the way they did. Fields are so deep, you can’t let up at all.

Second Captains

“This is my time to capitalise on my career. The next 10, 15 years is my time. I really can’t be doing silly things like playing football in the middle of the season to jeopardise even six months of my career. It’s a big chunk where I could make some hay and win a major or two. I won’t be making those mistakes again next year.”

The ankle injury aside, McIlroy lost almost a stone after a bout of food poisoning in Shanghai last month. The challenge of restoring his body to peak performance over the festive season is one the golfer is relishing. “I want to try and get healthy and get stronger again, get my body back, because I haven’t been able to do as much in the gym as I would have liked over the past few months,” McIlroy explained. “So I am really going to concentrate on that. I’ve got an eight-week period where I don’t have to play golf. I don’t have to worry about being sore, going and playing a round of golf.

“I put a new driver and a new ball in the bag a few weeks ago; I think Turkey was the first place. I’m really happy with that. I don’t really want to tinker much with my equipment going forward. I’m really happy with what I have.”

He added: “I might hit a few shots between now and the new year, but I won’t get serious until after the new year when I come back here to Dubai early January and start to practise again before the season.”

And what of the boarding pass from this year’s trip to Abu Dhabi? McIlroy uses it to jot down a list of yearly objectives. He remains coy on what precisely can, or cannot, be ticked off from 2015.

“I always put down a couple of goals that are not golf related, just things in my life that I would like to do better, as a person,” said McIlroy. “There’s a couple things I’ve been able to tick off that list.

“But on the golf side, I guess just one; one thing I was able to tick off, which was winning the Race to Dubai. Obviously I wanted to win majors. I wanted to improve in certain areas of my game and didn’t quite do that, but these things happen. You have to set yourself these lofty goals to try and get better.”

Fresh impetus is an equally valuable asset. In two months’ time McIlroy will seek to go head to head with Spieth, back in the Middle East, while harbouring precisely that.

(Guardian service)