Mr Stevenson suspected he was dealing with “pushy parents” but soon accepted he was wrong.
“Gerry convinced that it was not the case, because he said ‘it’s all him, it’s all Rory, and we’ve just been, through his young life, doing every thing we can to help him with his ambition to be a professional golfer’.
“I took a decision that if his parents had made these sacrifices and had done all this work on his behalf, that his school needed to do that too.”
The retired principal said that when families, schools and peer groups work well together “dreams are possible”.
“We were taking a risk, it could have fallen apart,” he admitted.
As for the young McIlroy, he remembers him as popular but quite shy.
He was single-minded about golf, and it is clear that determination has served him well in the past 20 years.