PINEHURST, N.C. – Where does Rory McIlroy go from here? Where to start picking up the pieces of a shattered dream?
Do you take solace in the fact that, once again, you were in contention for a major forehand until the final holes?
Do you consider that you have lost three majors in the last two years (the 2022 Open Championship, the 2023 US Open and this one) by a total of four strokes?
Does it collapse? Implode? He trudged his way through the rest of his career wondering how 6 feet of putts on Sunday night could have changed his life.
On Sunday night at the US Open at Pinehurst, McIlroy saw his best chance to win a major in the last decade (a decade, lest we forget, already filled with near-misses): roll into the cup, look over the rim and right lip. onwards. Twice.
Behind him, Bryson DeChambeau lurked, waiting for an opportunity to attack. On the back nine, DeChambeau had lost the three-stroke lead he had started the day with, but he remained focused, on McIlroy and on his own game. And when McIlroy’s third shot at No. 18 came within 4 feet of the flag, DeChambeau had a moment of doubt.
Man, if he makes par, I don’t know how I’m going to beat him, DeChambeau thought.
“Then I heard the moans,” DeChambeau said later. “As if I had gotten a shot of adrenaline. I said, Well you can do this.”
the moans. I’ve covered thousands of sporting events over the years and I’ve never heard a sound come from a gallery, a crowd or a gathering like that. It was a primal moan of agony, frustration, rage, disbelief. The thousands of people gathered around the 18th green went through all the stages of grief in the blink of an eye, from denial to sad, bitter acceptance. Only the real assholes in the crowd, and there were a few, like the one who yelled “It looks bad!” to McIlroy after his tee shot at the 18th, I would have liked DeChambeau to win like that.
“For him to miss that putt,” DeChambeau said, “I would never wish that on anyone. “It just happened that way.”
Every championship ends in heartbreak for someone. At this point, every major golf career ends in heartbreak for McIlroy. Every time the sun sets on another important Sunday and McIlroy leaves the 18th green without a trophy; every time he has to enter another big week and face the questions of “Will it happen this week, Rory?” every time a recorder touches another player’s name… well, how much longer can a player last?
This is the point where we insert the usual disclaimer that, yes, “millionaire golfer can’t win certain tournaments” is a 1 percent of 1 percent problem. If that’s all you bring to the table when considering McIlroy’s slow catastrophe that has lasted a decade and counting, his point is taken into account. Thanks for stopping by.
Players of McIlroy’s caliber don’t play golf to get rich; They get rich because they are very good at golf. There are many players who have earned an eight-figure fortune on the golf course and never came close to a major trophy. (Some of them were even in the rankings on Sunday.)
The record will show that McIlroy missed putts Nos. 16 and 18 that totaled 6 feet, 3 inches, misses that allowed DeChambeau to catch it and then pass it for the US Open trophy. But the numbers are not the real story here. The tragedy (and, I repeat, it is a Sports tragedy, not a true tragedy, is that McIlroy knows he failed at this. He knows he had a hand on that trophy. He knows that if he had these putts a thousand times more, he would probably make them all.
Rory McIlroy was 496-for-496 inside 3 feet this season before that miss.
-Justin Ray (@JustinRayGolf) June 16, 2024
The reason McIlroy has been a fan (and media) favorite for so many years is because he has always seemed so human. He’s a sports fan, likes TV shows like “Succession,” can even belt out a reasonably decent bar band version of “Do not stop believing.’” In a sporting world increasingly dominated by brand-friendly automatons spouting predictable clichés, McIlroy’s willingness to tackle tough topics, like the current divisiveness in golf, is rare and admirable.
He He did not speak to the media on Sunday night, getting into his courtesy Lexus and spinning the tires on the way out of Pinehurst, and I can’t blame him at all for that. What is he going to say that we don’t already know? Why do you need to open your heart for our inspection when we saw everything we needed to see right there on the 18th green and in the scorer’s room inside the clubhouse? Man deserves to mourn this loss in peace.
Where will it go from here? What does he do? How does he recover from such a devastating defeat in a decade of them? I have no idea. You neither. Probably neither will McIlroy himself.
After this week, there will be no more easy putts or easy answers.