What. A. Performance.

Rory McIlroy completed his four-day whipping of Quail Hollow on Sunday, following up an incredible Saturday 61 with a final-round 69 that he produced with such ease that you wonder how he ever shoots worse than 65 at this course.

McIlroy’s dominating seven-shot victory at the Wells Fargo Championship, in and of itself, really taught us nothing new about the 26-year-old. We already know he can win. He’s proven, over and over, that he can decimate fields. He nailed down a Sunday 62 here for his initial Tour victory in 2010.

But another win in Charlotte five years after his maiden PGA Tour triumph at the same venue brings us full circle on McIlroy. We can ponder what he once was and what he is now. Because honestly, the growth rate of Rory’s game over the past five years has been remarkable. There’s really no other way to describe the past half-decade for McIlory other than transformational (including physically).

At present, it’s tough not to employ revisionist history and state Rory’s rapid rise, four major championships and 18 worldwide wins at age 26, wasn’t inevitable. The Northern Irishman always glowed with abundant talent, something TV audiences had been privy to as far back as the 2007 Open Championship. And it manifested rapidly with six top-10s and a near-win on the European Tour in 2008, followed by a one-victory, 14 top-10 campaign the next year which netted him a second-place finish on the circuit’s Order of Merit. In 2010, he won at Quail Hollow and started to truly contend in the majors.

But the extremely potent and reliable McIlroy we see in 2015 was not the certain outcome. Superstar talent and promising early results don’t ensure such a quick ascent. Steve Stricker was once given next Nick Faldo hype on these same merits, and we see how that turned out.

And then there’s this.

Today, McIlroy is unassailable week-to-week and on Sundays, a combination of consistency and high-level performance under pressure. Five years ago, he did not possess an iota of either trait. McIlroy tended to fade in close situations on Sundays early in his career. The Northern Irishman captured just one victory among his first four 54-hole leads, and that single success was a near-collapse as well.

Going into 2012, questions abounded about whether McIlroy could get a handle on closing out victories when the leaderboard got tight.

What McIlroy has done in this department since is nothing short of astounding. Yes, time and experience tend to aid golfers in handling final-day pressure, but improvement here is not predetermined. Tom Weiskopf and Greg Norman, maybe more talented and well-positioned early on than McIlroy, could never quite figure it out. Jason Day has barely made crossroads in McIlroy’s same five years.

And while acquiring Sunday chops at warp speed isn’t unprecedented, the two guys who come to mind in that department are Tom Watson and Ben Hogan, only two of the greatest players of all time with a combined 17 majors.

Yet, Rory somehow cruised with prosperity down their very exclusive path.

Some have pointed to the 2014 PGA Championship as the definitive moment where McIlroy developed the hardened Sunday persona. It happened well before that. After displaying virtually no ability to deal with packed Sunday leaderboards prior to 2012, McIlroy triumphed four times in that regard that very year.

The PGA win was further confirmation of this new-found ability and McIlroy ratcheted it up with late heroics in a series of matches on the way to victory at the WGC-Cadillac Match Play.

McIlroy has now converted on eight of his last ten 54-hole leads, and even that excludes a few other tight triumphs. He’s gone from Sunday bum to a near-Tiger state of final round dominance around the lead in a matter of five years.

How brilliant is that?

The killer instinct development is only half of the equation too, and maybe the less impressive half. Inconsistency may actually be the bigger hurdle to overcome in golf. And few great players were as mired, and appeared as doomed, in this department as McIlroy early in his career. Remember, five years ago, four years ago, three years ago and two years ago, McIlroy could disappear for months on end. He looked downright replacement-level at times in those lulls. And then, out of nowhere, Rory has obliterated his inconsistent ways.

From the beginning of 2014, McIlroy has competed in a combined 33 PGA and European Tour events. He made the weekend on 31 occasions (for a 94 percent made cut rate). Of those 31 weekends, McIlroy has finished among the top 25 EVERY SINGLE TIME. And there are an absurd 24 top-10s in that set (73 PERCENT!).

Those numbers are insane, (Tiger-like, actually). You’re telling me this guy would just toss away something as clingy as inconsistency in a snap?

I understand that Rory is not a rags-to-riches story. Five years ago, he was expected to be the game’s next great player. But McIlroy is a nearly unrecognizable golfer just five years from that 2010 Sunday in Charlotte. We expected the Northern Irishman to evolve, doing so this fast may be the most impressive accomplishment of his young career.