Jordan Spieth Masters victory sees golf's new era in safe hands

The Ashes, the Rugby World Cup and the World Athletics Championships may follow later this year, but it will take something superhuman to usurp Jordan Spieth as the outstanding individual sporting performance of 2015 after his master class at Augusta.

You need only look at the numbers to appreciate the scale of Spieth's achievement. Finishing 18-under par, the joint-highest winning score ever in Georgia. Twenty-five birdies, the most in Masters history. The second youngest player to win the green jacket. Only the fifth wire-to-wire champion.

The only thing that stretches further than the deluge of records achieved by Spieth is his formidable potential which makes victory over the multi-major winning chasing pack of Phil Mickelson, Justin Rose and Rory McIlroy anything but a likely one-off.

The 21-year-old would be the first to admit that conditions assisted low scoring. Light winds and slow greens made pins vulnerable to an all-out assault yet it was Spieth who enjoyed the most success with a perfect game from the tee, and nerveless putting.

They are components which make Spieth a future multiple major champion, but none are more impressive than how the Texan holds himself. At Gleneagles on his maiden Ryder Cup appearance, Spieth produced the most assured display of any rookie in recent time. In just his second Masters appearance, Spieth exerted confidence and calmness from the outset.

It might not have been as breathtaking a performance as Tiger Woods' victory at the Masters in 1997, nor his 12-shot win three years later but Spieth deserves to have his performance held in equally high regard. Going forward, his rivalry with world No.1 McIlroy could add extra credence to his assault on golfing dominance – a challenge Woods never had during his period of authority.

Furthermore, in Spieth, golf also has a future worth investing in. The sport shudders at the thought of life after Woods; the reception to his return this week an indication of that and in McIlroy there is a champion to lead a new era in the sport.

But in the same way golf is suffering from over a decade of hanging onto Woods' coattails, with two figureheads at the top of the game there is reason for genuine optimism that the 14-time major winner can come and go as he pleases without the sport unduly suffering.

So during a week where records tumbled and dreams were realised, it is the landscape of golf that is the true winner at Augusta. Very much out of the woods.