Rory McIlroy with sit down with his family in Belfast for a traditional Christmas Day dinner satisfied with a ‘reasonable enough’ 2016.

The current World No. 2 collected three victories from his 22 events on both the European Tour and the PGA Tour starting with keeping Scotland’s Russell Knox at arm’s reach to capture the Irish Open and then come from behind in both the Deutsche Bank Championship in Boston and the season-ending Tour Championship in Atlanta.

Capturing the Tour Championship landed McIlroy a combined $US 11.5m in prize money but in speaking with SKY Sports it was his victory at the K. Club in Co. Kilkenny that delighted the Irishman most of all.

The victory that pleased Rory McIlroy the most in 2016 – ending a six month winless drought to capture a first Dubai Duty Free Irish Open. (Photo – European Tour)

“It’s been interesting, 2016 has definitely been interesting,” he said. “I feel like the start of the year was consistent without getting any wins.

“I’d been playing pretty well, but not getting the results I wanted, and then a huge win at the Irish Open for me in front of a home crowd.

“That’s been a lifelong dream of mine, to win the Irish Open. I’d pretty much won every other Irish event and the Irish Open completed the set so that was nice.”

After that success, however, McIlroy faltered, failing to make the cut at the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship, either side of a fifth-placed finish that faded into irrelevance at Troon.

“It was a bit of a disappointing summer, I finished fifth at The Open, but that got lost in the Henrik [Stenson] and Phil [Mickelson] storyline,” he added,

“But I sort of redeemed myself, it could have ran on and been very disappointing, but I saved it with a Fedex Cup win with a couple of wins in the playoffs.

“It’s been a good year. It hasn’t been what I had hoped for at the start, but it’s been reasonable enough and I’m pretty happy with how the past 11 months has gone.”