McIlroy collapse at US Open is unwelcome golf heritage

We have no Rory McIlroy quotes to furnish you with today. The World No 2 hadn’t the stomach to stick around for the autopsy. It was just too grizzly.

The footage of McIlroy watching DeChambeau’s US Open winning putt in the scorer’s booth will soon replace Ralph Wiggum in the cinema as the go-to heartbreak meme.

This was different to the 2022 Open Championship loss in St Andrew’s, when nothing fell on Sunday and he was scuppered by the languid putting genius of Cameron Smith. And it was certainly different to last year’s US Open runner-up finish, when again no putts dropped and he never managed to draw level with eventual winner Wyndham Clark, despite several chances.

On Sunday, everything was going right until it wasn’t. For the first 14 holes, he was putting like a dream, long birdie putts pouring into the cup, knee-knocking short ones for par all being nailed. His driving was flawless, the shot tracer invariably sketching out a gentle right-to-left arc down each fairway. His chief rival was spending the final round rooting around in the unkempt areas, and was pushing almost every drive right.

With a one-stroke lead, McIlroy took too much club to the short 15th, the ball chasing through the back and from there on, it was all a struggle. His face looked increasingly haggard and stressed, his body language jumpy. The burden of 10 years without a major weighing on him. It all mattered too much.

When McIlroy settled over the par putt on 18th and was aiming outside the cup, many hearts sank back home. In light of the shocking – and considerably easier – missed putt on 16, it felt like no better than a 50:50 shot at that stage. A good number will surely have been unable to watch and the first they’ll have heard that the ball had slipped by was via the gasps on the television.

“Choking is a consequence of over-thinking and few sports give you more time to think than golf”

Choking is a consequence of over-thinking and few sports give you more time to think than golf. And more than most golfers, McIlroy gives the impression that there’s a lot going on in his head. This is where Scottie Scheffler’s caddie’s mantra – “It’s all in God’s hands” – is presumably so helpful to the World No 1.

The word ‘choke’ is a mild taboo in polite sporting circles and possibly overly favoured in impolite circles, aka barstools and the internet. It’s impossible, however, to watch the last three holes and pin the blame anywhere else but on mental frailty.

McIlroy’s choke over the final three holes in Pinehurst probably stands alongside Doug Sanders in St Andrew’s in 1970 and Scott Hoch in Augusta in 1989 – neither of whom ever managed to win a major – as among the most infamous. (For Hoch’s 2ft miss, a small box in the corner showed an initially resigned Nick Faldo watching on, his eyebrows briefly raising as he was stunned to realise he was still in it).

Jean Van de Velde’s choke, probably the most famous and indefensible of all-time, is somewhat different. There was a curious flippancy to the way the Frenchman played the 72nd in Carnoustie, which seems to set it in another category.

Many have choked and got away with it.

Newly-minted World Golf Hall of Famer Padraig Harrington clearly choked over the line in his first major, after all. His second shot into the burn in Carnoustie (again) was, as he’s said many times since, the first time he ever felt embarrassed on a golf course.

In the 2001 US Open, Retief Goosen three-putted from inside 15ft when two putts would have won it, missing an easier par putt than McIlroy’s to take victory. He had the reprieve of an 18-hole playoff the following day – the USGA have since knocked that practice on the head – and got the job done.

Even the ever-serene Scheffler, with several shots of a cushion, managed to four-putt the 18th in Augusta in 2022 before finally tidying up for his first major.

After McIlroy’s putt on 18 lipped out, a segment of the crowd broke into an unpleasant burst of ‘USA! USA! USA!’, which is not what they would encourage at golf etiquette school.

McIlroy’s highly visible and vocal role as a PGA Tour loyalist in the great LIV schism has alienated a portion of the golfing public, for sure. Everything now being refracted through a political lens, the fact that the MAGA heads – and their god himself – have allied themselves with the upstart tour may be mixed up in this somewhere. (LIV representative Sergio Garcia did seem inordinately happy for DeChambeau afterwards.)

Or maybe it was just unbridled American patriotism, a la Brookline ’99. McIlroy has, after all, become a passionate advocate and spiritual leader within Team Europe.

No, the raucous home crowd were enthusiastically behind the overnight leader, the only man in the sport who has become universally more popular as a result of joining the Saudi-backed Tour.

DeChambeau seemed to approach the US Open in much the same jovial spirit he did one of his YouTube challenge videos – let’s try and break 50 with Paige Spiranac or what have you.

He was joshing with the crowd, making faces to camera, gatecrashing media slots. He even invaded Sky Sports’ late-hour summing up piece, running up alongside Nick Dougherty, Laura Davies and Wayne Riley for a few very brief words before scampering along to his adoring public so they could cop a feel of the US Open trophy, which he’d promised them.

“De Chambeau managed to win the US Open despite barely hitting a fairway on Sunday”

His excitability resembles that of a one-time loner giddy on new-found popularity. It feels like a long time since he was having spectators removed by security for hollering ‘Brooksy’ in his face – Koepka being the jock who made the nerd’s life miserable for a short while.

Thanks to McIlroy’s woeful display of the yips on the way home, he managed to win the US Open despite barely hitting a fairway on Sunday. Conventional wisdom used to have it that this was more or less impossible.

Luck did favour him on most occasions, in a way it didn’t McIlroy on 18. Usually, he managed to avoid the deadly tufts of wire-grass sprouting up in the so-called ‘native area’. Nearly always, he found sand and had a clear swing at the ball.

Pinehurst No 2, now pencilled as one the US Open’s anchor courses going forward (they’re drifting towards a tighter Open Championship style rota system it appears), was a suitably capricious layout and provided unmatched drama.

This is where the US Open is streets ahead of the PGA Championship, in that the course itself becomes a vibrant character, as opposed to a bland and blank canvas for the players to shoot birdies.

In an era of putting competitions on Sunday and ‘your-winner-on-27-under-par’ golf, it was what traditionalists yearn for in a US Open.

‘USA! USA! USA!’ was the taunting refrain around Pinehurst last night. And it could be that way for all the majors this year. The Yanks now have a shot at winning all four for the first time since 1982.

They won every major in 2020 but that was the Covid year when the Open Championship was cancelled. There will be no asterisk on this one if someone from across the pond wins in Troon.

Sure, there’s always a chance McIlroy will stop them. As Colin Montgomerie – zero majors, so think of that – said after messing up from the middle of the 18th fairway in Winged Foot, 2006: “I look forward to coming back next year for another US Open… disaster.”

Triumph and disaster, McIlroy will be the centre of attention more than ever in Scotland next month.