The agony of defeat and ecstasy of victory

Like putting confidence is all

The 250th anniversary of the foundation of the Royal & Ancient was celebrated, as you’d expect, in style. A huge two storey marquee was erected and a series of well attended dinners took place with hundreds of golfers coming from all quarters of the globe. To enable all those present to see the speakers, large tv screens were placed near all the tables.

Each evening during dinner, before the speeches, these screens showed films of past Open Championships. These were interesting from a historical point of view and the whole sequence lasted over two hours. One of the clips showed Doug Sanders on the Old Course at St Andrews missing a three foot putt on the eighteenth green. If Sanders had sunk that putt he, not Jack Nicklaus, would have won the 1970 Open and his life would have changed for ever.

But he didn’t sink it, Instead he was left to rue the four shots he had taken to get down from the spot where his tee shot had finished on the fairway barely seventy yards short of the green. I wonder how many times Sanders replayed those four shots in his mind in the days and nights following that Open? In my judgment a person who suffers a terrible experience has got over it when they only think of it once a day. That can take a very long time.

As I attended several of these anniversary dinners I saw that clip more than once and became familiar with that miss. Since then I have always regarded it, together with Scott Hoch’s even shorter miss at the first play-off hole in the 1989 Masters at Augusta against Nick Faldo, as one of the two most famous missed short putts which cost a player their one chance to win a major championship.

Until last Sunday evening, that is.

Given Pinehurst’s increasingly close relationship with the USGA, one third of whose staff are now based there, an anniversary of some kind is likely to be celebrated before long. If this includes showing tv clips of past US Opens it will certainly include a third more recent missed short putt. It is McIlroy’s misfortune that he was the loser in one of the most dramatic conclusions to this Championship which will be talked about and watched on tv long after he and DeChambeau have hung up their clubs.

Rarely can the agony of defeat and the ecstasy of victory have been so vividly and mercilessly exposed over the closing holes of a major championship as they were in the final round at Pinehurst. Two great golfers, each charismatic in their own different ways, and both having topped the leader board at different times since the first round, battled it out.

In the closing moments Rory McIlroy stood forlorn and alone after signing his card, like a character in a Shakespearian tragedy, unable to do anything except watch as Bryson DeChambeau holed his winning putt. The crowd went mad and the winner justifiably basked in their applause.

Earlier in the round last Sunday it looked as though DeChambeau’s overnight lead would be enough to keep him ahead. But McIlroy was putting well and rallied strongly, with a brilliant run of four birdies in five holes from nine through thirteen, to edge two strokes ahead of his rival. At this point it even started to feel as if the 2024 US Open was McIlroy’s to lose.

Before this championship began McIlroy might have wondered if history would repeat itself. In 1999 Payne Stewart came to Pinehurst, after squandering a four stroke lead, going into the final round of the previous year’s US Open. The following year, aged forty and eight years after his last major win, he finally claimed his second win. McIlroy came close to winning this event a year ago at Los Angeles Country Club.

Back to last Sunday. Despite his disastrous missed putt on the sixteenth McIlroy was still in with a chance. And he wasn’t the only player to miss a tiddler on the last four holes. DeChambeau himself, also under pressure, three putted for the first time in four days at the fifteenth. The door was still ajar.

In the end though DeChambeau, displaying immense mental strength, courageously kept his nerve. His long up and down from the bunker at the eighteenth will be talked about as long as McIlroy’s painful loss and it clinched a win which was richly deserved.

How different the future now looks for these two. DeChambeau is an odds on bet to win more majors, exactly as the then 25 year old McIlroy was ten years ago. By contrast, whether McIlroy can win another major is now far from certain. Every fan in the world, including me, will be wishing him well when the Open takes place at Royal Troon next month.

But the mental hurdle he must overcome to do so has got a lot higher in the last six days. It’s easy to forget that all Arnold Palmer’s major championships were won before he was 35, the age McIlroy is now, as were Seve Ballesteros’s. Let’s hope this won’t be McIlroy’s fate.

DeChambeau wasn’t the only winner last week. Pinehurst No 2 fully lived up to expectations, delivering both a worthy winner and a gripping contest. A few murmurs were heard about the chancy nature of the lies awaiting those who strayed off the fairway but there’s nothing wrong with that. After all, missing a fairway must sometimes be punished.

Some less well known names also featured on the leaderboards. Although Ludvig Aberg faded on the last day he will surely be one of Europe’s future stars. At one point Matthieu Pavon looked capable of becoming the first Frenchman to win a major since Arnaud Massey in 1907.

Mention of Arnold Palmer reminds me that, of all the distinguished people who spoke during the R&A 250th anniversary dinners, he was the best in a lineup which contained plenty of excellent communicators such as the late Peter Alliss.

On this side of the pond we recognise that Palmer, more than any other single person, made the Open Championship a must play event for all the world’s best golfers. The menu he signed for me that evening twenty years ago has a place of honour in my personal golf Hall of Fame.

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Today the annual match between Sunningdale and the UK Parliamentary Golfing Society, a fixture dating back half a century, takes place. This year, for the first time, it clashes with the British Parliamentary Election. This has forced some players to drop out as they are running for office and can’t interrupt their campaign to go play golf.

Interestingly it has been easier to fill last minute vacancies in the team with activists from the opposition Labour Party. This suggests they are more confident of victory on July 4 than the governing Conservatives. I suspect that in twelve days time their confidence will be shown to have been well founded.