Rory McIlroy is the one option to win Sports Personality – if he’s snubbed but once more it is going to be a stain on an award that’s quickly shedding the little gravitas it has left, writes OLIVER HOLT

It was one of the greatest editions of the Masters there had ever been and when Rory McIlroy, still flushed with the impossible drama of an incredible day, walked into the media theatre at Augusta National last April, he said he wanted to break with protocol and ask us a question first.

Grinning from ear to ear, remembering how the build-up to each Masters for more than a decade had been dominated by questions about his temperament, his game and whether this would finally be the time when he would complete his Grand Slam of major victories, he stared out into the auditorium.

‘What,’ he said, ‘are we going to talk about next year?’

We’ll have to wait until April to get the answer to that but there is one other topic of sporting conversation that McIlroy also rendered moot when he joined Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods as the only golfers to have won all four of golf’s greatest tournaments.

There are other worthy contenders on the BBC Sports Personality of the Year shortlist that was announced on Thursday morning but unless something goes horribly awry, unless this award is actually predicated on which sports the BBC televises rather than who deserves it most, there can only be one winner and that winner is McIlroy.

There is absolutely no desire here to denigrate the claims of any of the other contenders, although I find it surprising that Joe Root has not made the list. Root is England’s greatest ever batsman and amid the chaos of England’s opening two defeats in the Ashes, he scored his first century in Australia in the second Test in Brisbane, the completion of his own Grand Slam.

All of those who were included – most recently Lando Norris with his brilliant, courageous down-to-the-wire victory to become the Formula One world drivers’ champion for the first time – have achieved things that have inspired us.

But come on, it has to be McIlroy this year. He should have won it in 2014. He won two majors that year and still missed out on the BBC award. At the ceremony, the winner, Lewis Hamilton, said he assumed McIlroy was going to win. But Hamilton had won his second world title and should have won the award before, too, so no one complained too much.

But this year, there is no room for error. If the show itself long ago ceased to carry any gravitas – Sue Barker’s horrendous joke about keeping Gavin Henson ‘out of Church’ in 2005 was the moment it lost me – the award still means something.

And if all McIlroy had done in the last 12 months was win the Masters, that would surely have been enough to single him out as the recipient when the BBC award is presented on December 18.

McIlroy had hunted that Green Jacket for so long that it had begun to seem as though he would never feel it draped over his shoulders. Many believed the tournament had become a mental block for him after he blew a four-shot lead going into the final round in 2011 and that it was destined to be the one prize that escaped him.

It appeared that might be the case yet again when McIlroy lost a two-shot lead in two holes at the start of his final round. Then he lost a four-shot lead on the back nine in three holes, lofting a wedge shot into the tributary of Rae’s Creek on the par-five 13th.

But McIlroy fought all those demons and defeated them. If he had missed out again, it would have left a question mark against his claims to greatness but when McIlroy finally sealed that nail-biting win in a play-off against Justin Rose last April, that question mark was removed. There are none left against his name now.

Winning the Grand Slam makes him not just the greatest golfer the United Kingdom has ever produced but it makes him the greatest European golfer there has ever been, too; the only European to have won all four of the majors, which lifts him above Nick Faldo and Seve Ballesteros.

McIlroy’s year was about more than the Masters, too. If the Masters triumph was a great catharsis, the way McIlroy led Europe to victory in the Ryder Cup in the brutal bear pit of Bethpage Black, just outside New York City, was another episode that emphasised his greatness.

I walked the course with McIlroy for all three days at Bethpage Black and I saw and heard the horrific and relentless abuse that he and his wife, Erica Stoll, had to endure from the American crowds as McIlroy and his team-mates tried to secure the first European victory on US soil for 13 years. 

The abuse got so bad and so personal that police dogs had to be brought in to patrol the fairways in the kinds of scenes that the sport has never witnessed before. But McIlroy remained defiant throughout it all.

McIlroy was unbeaten over the first two days when the torrent of invective from the New York galleries was at its worst and his 3.5 points in his first four matches helped put Europe in an unassailable position.

It is not usually part of the deal for golfers to have to brave the kind of adversity that McIlroy and his team-mates had to face on Long Island but McIlroy rose to the challenge and inspired Europe to a memorable 15-13 win.

Oh, and McIlroy also won the Race to Dubai, the DP World Tour’s order of merit, for the seventh time, just one shy of the record held by Colin Montgomerie. It has been his annus mirabilis.

McIlroy is not a spring chicken any more. He is 36 and he has got a decent collection of grey hairs. That he is one of the greatest sportsmen this country has ever produced and yet has not won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award is a glaring anomaly that has to be corrected.

If McIlroy does not win it this year, he never will. If his name were to remain absent from the list of great men and women who have been crowned BBC Sports Personality of the Year, it would be a stain on the award forever.