Rory McIlroy is picking up right where he left off following a final-round 66 at the European Tour’s BMW PGA Championship with a blistering 63 at the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide Insurance. He is now an impressive 15-under-par in his last 36 holes.

“I felt very comfortable out there again on the golf course,” McIlroy said. “I got off to a solid start, birdieing  two of the first four holes, then picked up another couple later on in the front nine and turned in 4?under, which is a solid start without doing anything really special.”

Rory might not think or feel like he’s doing anything special, but a 9-under-par 63, which included a double-bogey 6 on the par-4 14th, is nothing to sneeze at. His 3-stroke lead is the largest held at the Memorial Tournament since 2009, when Luke Donald led by three over four others.

Despite his play, fears of injury were sparked when McIlroy seemed to tweak his knee midway through the round.

“I felt like I tweaked it on my second shot on the 7th,” McIlroy said. “I tweaked my back on Friday evening at Wentworth and played through that last weekend and I tweaked my knee here this week.  But I’ll be okay. Some treatment and I should be fine for the morning.”

McIlroy, who hasn’t won on the PGA Tour since back-to-back victories at the 2012 Deutsche Bank Championship and BMW Championship in the FedExCup Playoffs, will have some history working against him this week.

Dating back to the Memorial Tournament’s inaugural year of 1976, there have only been two first-round leaders/co-leaders who have managed to convert for the win; Ernie Els in 2004 and Justin Rose in 2010. Additionally, only seven International players have been able to win at Muirfield Village in 38 years.

But neither heartbreak nor injury seem capable of subduing McIlroy’s confidence at the moment.

“I was expecting this to happen,  I’ve been playing well,” McIlroy said. “I’ve been posting good numbers, good rounds, and I knew my game was close … I’ve been trending in the right direction, and it’s starting to all come together.”

If everything goes according to plan, and McIlroy is able to hold on to the first spot atop the leaderboard come Sunday afternoon, it will most likely see him head into the U.S. Open at Pinehurst as the odds-on favorite, but most of all, it will see McIlroy lay claim to Jack’s tournament — a special one indeed.