Top of the world and fresh from all and sundry extolling your talent, what's a sportsman to do?
Play the immodest card and act shy and retiring, or capitalise on entering the A-list stratosphere? Depressingly, Rory McIlroy opted for the latter.
Golf's number one was in New York on Monday night to watch girlfriend Caroline Wozniacki play Maria Sharapova in a Madison Square Garden exhibition match.
Wozniacki is yet to win a Grand Slam unlike her boyfriend, and lost to the leggy Russian, but it was the arrival of McIlroy that saw the flashing of lightbulbs to increase.
The Dane beckoned the Ulsterman down to play a point against Sharapova, which he won. But despite the frivolous nature of the event, is this a sign of what McIlroy will resort to on a more regular basis?
He is an extraordinary talent and has done superbly to overcome the mental meltdown at Augusta last year, but he would do well to live by Winston Churchill's "Keep calm and carry on" mantra.
McIlroy beats Sharapova:
Initially he was reluctant to move stateside and compete on the PGA Tour, but new squeeze and Florida-based Wozniacki prompted a sudden re-think.
McIlroy tweeted his excitement to have taken to the MSG stage:
The trappings of fame easily demean a sportsman. David Beckham has willingly morphed into a celebrity rather than a footballer, from wearing sarongs to singing along with Jonathan Ross.
Even McIlroy's accent is beginning to contain an American twang to it, arguably the epitome of pretentiousness. Swapping a club for a racquet may be harmless, but he resembled that scene in Casino when Kevin Pollak looks on mortified at Robert De Niro's Ace Rothstein juggling on television.
So after the sideshow comes the slideshow: