Cristiano Ronaldo began the new year and his third decade in professional football with a bang on Monday.
He netted his first hat-trick since swapping Real Madrid for Juventus 18 months ago as the Serie A joint-leaders swept Cagliari aside.
Sporting a new-look top knot hairstyle, it was more of the same for the 34-year-old as he scored an astonishing 56th career treble.
Significantly the milestone keeps him in touch with achieving something that has alluded him for the last five years.
Despite scoring 120 times in the last five seasons, Ronaldo hasn't won a single Golden Boot in that time.
His last Golden Boot came after an extraordinary 2014-15 season, where he scored 48 league goals in 35 appearances for Real Madrid.
Since then he has been pipped to the post, in Spain by a combination of Barcelona pair Luis Suarez and Lionel Messi.
Despite scoring 35 times in 2015-16, Suarez's incredible haul of 40 in just 35 games proved decisive.
And last season it was Italian veteran Fabio Quagliarella, who plundered 26 goals for Sampdoria - five more than Ronaldo managed in the black and white of Juventus.
It was a fairly under-par return for Ronaldo - his lowest goalscoring season since his final year at Manchester United 10 years previously.
This season he is now operating on a near goal-per-game ratio, undoubtedly aided by Monday afternoon's hat-trick.
With 13 goals in 15 games now it puts him back in the conversation to finish as the top scorer in Italy this season.
But it will be a tall order for Ronaldo to close the gap to both Romelu Lukaku and the irrepressible Ciro Immobile.
Lukaku boasts one more goal than Ronaldo this season, and has been lethal in his debut season at Inter Milan.
With Inter leading Juve on goal difference at the top of Serie A, the Belgian is going head-to-head with Ronaldo in more ways than one.
But out-stripping them both is 29-year-old Lazio striker, Immobile.
Immobile has 19 goals in 17 appearances, and much like last season's winner, Quagliarella, is an unlikely leader at this halfway stage.
Can he keep it up? Well, he is no stranger to scoring bucketloads of goals.
Two seasons ago he notched 41 times - 29 in the league. That season, aided by European exploits, acts mostly as an outlier however.
But he has been inspired by the best run of form of his life. After ending a month-long drought with a brace against Brescia at the weekend, he is back in the goals.
You can bet on him keeping up his end of the bargain for the rest of the campaign as Lazio, third in the table, plug away at securing a return to Champions League football.
In Italy, the focus remains on the battle for supremacy between both Juve and Inter and Ronaldo and Lukaku.
The pair dominated headlines on Tuesday after scoring five between them on Monday
Corriere dello Sport hailed them as 'Lions in Winter', and pinpointed Lukaku's 'merciless response' having earlier seen Ronaldo fire Juventus back to the top of the table ahead of Inter's match in Naples.
Gazzetta dello Sport described the two strikers as 'The Wise Men' as they celebrated the Juventus-Inter rivalry continuing 'without breath' after 18 matches.
If Ronaldo is to achieve something he has not for five years then he will have to rail against the passing of time and remain as injury free as possible.
But his 13 goals in 1,315 minutes this season have come at a faster rate than Lukaku's.
It is as much up to how Maurizio Sarri uses his star man. He has looked to rest him and substitute him early at stages so far this season to keep him fresh for the business end of the campaign.
But with the title race looking likely to go to the wire, and their desperation for Champions League glory abundantly clear, perhaps Sarri won't have much of a chance to rest the forward he needs above all else.
With twin glory on offer, it could inspire Ronaldo to score the goals that lead to both individual and collective acclaim.
