WHAT about that then? If we were all scraping our jaws up off the floor after last year’s spectacular Showdoon at Troon on the final day of the Open Championship, then this Shoogle in Southport left our mouths agape in bamboozling, captivated wonder. From calamity to conquest, this was another of golf’s greatest days.

If the late, swashbuckling Seve Ballesteros was the Car Park Champion up the coast at Lytham in 1979, then Jordan Spieth will go down as the Practice Range Champion in 2017.

The 23-year-old’s mind-mangling escapade on the 13th hole was ghoulishly enthralling. His salvage operation and subsequent brilliance, however, was spell-binding as he conjured the kind of imperious, inspiring golf that can only be produced by the very best.

Spieth flirted with disaster but his response in the face of the mountainous adversity that was higher than the dune he plootered about on for ages featured all the hallmarks of those in the pantheon of greats.

The Champion Golfer of the Year is a title that has to be earned and, my goodness, Spieth put in the hard yards.

In the end, this thrilling Texan won by three shots from Matt Kuchar with a 12-under 268 after a closing 69 that will go down as one of the most extraordinary rounds of this far from ordinary young man’s career.

He will head to the PGA Championship in three weeks aiming to complete the career grand slam. We may have all caught our breaths by then.

“That was eventful,” puffed Spieth with a chuckle. “17 pars and a birdie would’ve done but there are various roads to get there.”

Spieth took the tourist route. While the charging Li Haotong came hurtling up the order with a sparkling 63 to set a six-under clubhouse lead, Spieth had looked tense and agitated for much of his final round as he tried to preserve the three shot advantage he had brilliantly forged through 54-holes.

There were missed putts here, little wobbles there and tee-shots that were going everywhere as he stumbled to the turn in three-over while Kuchar drew level.

Nobody, though, could have predicted the turn of events that occurred on the 13th hole as he plunged his drive so far right into the dunes, the R&A just about had to phone the Sefton Sands Search and Rescue unit. As he watched his ball sail off into the distance, he stood with his head in his hands

From that point, a confused, anguish-laden and prolonged palaver unfolded as Spieth opted to take an unplayable and go back some 50 yards or so onto the driving range to play his third shot. “I asked if the range was OB and was told no,” he reasoned. “It was a better location than to go back to the tee.”

As he weighed up his options amid the articulated equipment wagons that were parked there, you half expected an announcement to come over the tanoy requesting, “could the owner of a Titleist lorry, registration number FE67 SWF please return to your vehicle.”

It took some 20 minutes for him to play his shot as Kuchar twiddled his thumbs on the fairway. “I apologised profusely to Matt for the time it took for him to hit his second,” admitted Spieth. “It wasn’t fair.”

After that Masters meltdown last year, this dire situation had the potential to be equally as savaging but after he eventually clattered his approach just shy of the bunker, he managed to get up and down for a career bogey to drop just a shot behind his rival.

“I said to my caddie, ‘that’s a momentum shift’,” Spieth added. “That putt mattered. From there I became the challenger instead of the leader. Before that, the wheels had come off completely. I was asking myself ‘how do we get back on track?’. It took a bogey to do that.”

What happened next will remain etched on the mind as if chiselled on by the Claret Jug engraver.

He came within a whisker of making an ace on the very next hole after his tee-shot skipped narrowly past the hole.

A routine birdie putt, on day that was far from routine, galvanised Spieth and from there poor Kuchar was hit by a quite devastating salvo.

A raking eagle putt from some 40-feet on the next thrust him back into the lead. “Go get that out,” Spieth hollered to his caddie as he marched to the next tee with purposeful gusto.

Another long putt for birdie on the 16th was a magical encore. Not so long ago, Spieth had been reeling on the ropes but his counter-punches had flattened Kuchar.

Another birdie on 17 gilded the lily. Spieth had hauled himself back from the brink in a quite wondrous way.

Given the absorbing nature of the finale, everything else almost became a footnote.

Li’s 63 was deserving of thunderous acclaim as he finished third in his Open debut on six-under while Rory McIlroy mounted a late flurry with an eagle on 17 to finish fourth with the Scottish Open champion, Rafa Cabrera-Bello.

“He’s a fighter, he’s shown that the whole way through his short career,” said McIlroy of Spieth.

From a losing battle to a colossal conquest. This was a fight and a half for Spieth.