With a sunny disposition to the end, even while getting drenched, Cameron Smith could find something to enjoy about the rain when he heard that at least one half of his Sunday sporting dream double had come to pass.
Smith had rather hoped that, come Sunday night at Hoylake, he would be holding aloft the Claret Jug again while Australia's cricketers would be celebrating the retention of the Ashes.
On hearing the news from 50 miles away that the rain was also still tumbling down at Old Trafford, Smith smiled: "That's good for us."
No wonder he had noticed during his round that "there wasn't too many Poms out there today chirping at me. Not as many as the last few days, that's for sure!"
But while he was a bit frustrated at not having put up the sort of sterling defence of his crown that he would have liked, Smith departed Hoylake promising that he intends to get that Jug back again.
"Yeah, I think I can get it back," said the Queenslander.
"Even at the start of the week I felt as though I was playing good enough golf. It just wasn't my week. Usually I'm leaning on my putter to make good scores, and this week it was almost the opposite.
"It was awesome being back here. I would have liked to have done a better job at defending the title, but just wasn't my week this week.
"But I can't wait to get back here next year and give it another crack. It's golf that I've learned to love! Can't wait."
Learned to love? "Yeah, I used to not like it," laughed Smith - and this had been the sort of day when it really was hard to enjoy it.
"It was tough. Just wet and the ball wasn't going very far, not a lot of wind. I hit a drive on 16 straight over a bunker which I thought I could carry - and we were five or six metres short of it."
But his 12 months as Champion Golfer of the Year, a sometimes traumatic year in which he had joined LIV Golf, had, he felt, been great.
"It was really nice to come back and play the golf courses again, see the fans again, and, yeah, I can't wait to get back next year at Troon - and, hopefully, I can do a better job of being up there then."
