Rory McIlroy lost the 2024 U.S. Open, and this time, there is no escaping that harsh reality

PINEHURST, North Carolina – The golf’s greatest showman, Bryson DeChambeau, ruled Pinehurst No. 2 and the 2024 US Open for three consecutive days. And then four-time major champion Rory McIlroy began to tear down the big tent.

McIlroy turned a three-stroke deficit into one on the turn, and with birdies at No. 1 and No. 9, he pushed the tournament into that existential place at the back of a major where the golf seems almost secondary to what’s going on. being stirred in the hands, heads, and hearts of the contenders.

It’s hard to get to that place in a major tournament, and McIlroy has done it so few times since he last won such an event in August 2014. Rarely has Rory realistically been in the hunt for history with nine holes still on the table.

If there’s one criticism of his performance as a professional over the last decade, it’s this: McIlroy is too good to have given himself so few attempts to hold onto a silver trophy with two hours remaining on Sunday.

This Sunday, the shots continued to fall in a way that hadn’t happened in the past. One on par-4 12 to 22 feet. Another on the short par-4 13th, where he hit his tee shot over the green. After four birdies over a five-hole stretch, McIlroy was two ahead of DeChambeau, who hit just four of his first 10 fairways.

The tent swayed in the wind and its poles swayed inside.

It would be a new and invigorating experience for Rory to break someone else’s heart.

The Northern Irishman continued to unload driver after driver, piercing the dense, dusty US Open air at one of golf’s great venues. McIlroy may never have hit that club better than he did in 72 holes this week. After a passable bogey on the 15th, he punished 349 yards on the par-4 16th.

And then everything fell apart.

The last 10 years have been different than McIlroy imagined. The same happened with the last two years. And the last three months.

When you’re 25 years old and have four majors to your name, and are just one Masters shy of a career grand slam, it can be inconceivable that life doesn’t always tip in your direction. There is an innocence to the arrogance of youth.

Especially when your swing looks like Rory’s.

Who would have thought – after intimidating Phil Mickelson and Rickie Fowler at Valhalla in 2014 en route to his fourth major – that McIlroy would go winless in the game’s biggest events for the next 10 years? Who would have thought — after Martin Kaymer hit him with 15 shots in 2014 at Pinehurst and McIlroy missed the cut in three of the next four U.S. Opens — that his best chance at winning one in the next decade would come at a U.S. Open? … in Pinehurst?

Ten years later, though, McIlroy has certainly learned that life comes to us all.

On and off the field, he suffered. Great loved ones always do so because, to be loved, you have to become vulnerable. And to be great, you have to, at some point, stop being.

But it wasn’t just the big losses.

McIlroy called himself a “sacrificial lamb” after fighting for the existence of the PGA Tour against LIV Golf, only to discover that his own commissioner went behind his back to sign a framework agreement with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. Most recently, he filed for divorce before the PGA Championship only to announce a reconciliation with his wife earlier this week before the US Open.

McIlroy has already suffered. It seems cruel that he needed to suffer more.

Even more cruel? This time, no one did anything but him.

The par putt on the 16th was, for the official record, 30 inches. McIlroy stood on the 16th tee box on Sunday, having converted 496 of 496 shots from within 3 feet this year. When he reached the 17th tee box, he was 496 out of 497.

The tournament was tied again, and for the next 30 minutes it was difficult to breathe.

McIlroy got up and down for par on the 17th, and DeChambeau matched the pace on the 16th. Three holes combined and they locked the horn at 6 under. The 2011 US Open champion was on the 18th tee box, and the 2020 US Open champion was on the 17th.

Pinehurst has many hallways where players can see and hear what the people around them are doing. That 17-18 turn was the most tense I can remember a major championship feeling. This was the 26th I personally participated.

Silence, somehow, roared.

DeChambeau began walking after a tee shot that landed less than 20 feet on the 17th. McIlroy saw the entire scene; there was no way he wouldn’t make it. He looked up and down the 18th fairway and blew into his hands trying to keep them from betraying him on a final missile.

After Bryson parred the 17th, McIlroy hit his approach on a sandy lane before the 18th green. He shot to 3 feet, 9 inches on the championship’s 72nd hole.

The distance is notable because McIlroy missed that shot too. This time, with a chance to potentially force a playoff or even win, he dropped to 5 under, one behind DeChambeau.

Three bogeys on the last four holes. McIlroy walked down the stairs and into the scoring room looking more dejected than ever.

Bryson hit his drive at No. 18, under a magnolia tree, and it nestled close to a root. He shot out of the front bunker, 55 yards from the hole. He then, miraculously, went up and down with a bunker shot that he said was “the shot of my life.”

Before DeChambeau finished signing his card as the 124th U.S. Open champion, McIlroy found his rental car, fleeing a crime scene he created.

Without speaking to anyone outside his inner circle, McIlroy started his Lexus, raised some gravel on your way out was in the air before DeChambeau finished speaking to the media. It was, all things considered, his worst and weakest impulse of the week.

Players, like people, are remembered for how they deal with adversity. We understand that our view of the people in our lives is shaped – for better or for worse – by moments in which from them lives that they would consider the most difficult.

McIlroy, for all the grace he has shown throughout his career, handled the pressure on and off the field in the final hour at Pinehurst as poorly as ever. With all the chips in his hand, he not only folded the hand, but also abandoned the game.

For someone who was considered an alpha and closer for most of his career, it was the most apathetic ending imaginable.

With the US Open hanging in his locker, McIlroy bogeyed three of the last four holes.

It’s one thing to miss putts from 15 and 20 feet. It’s a whole different thing to have a fifth major on the bat and lose 75 inches of putts to lose the U.S. Open.

With a collection of media members surrounding him, McIlroy hit the gas and was ejected from the property.

It’s one thing to stare at the music and offer little explanation. It’s something else entirely, rushing to the airport with the world waiting for your words.

CBS Sports reached out to McIlroy, but he had no comment.

There were some devastating losses for the McIlroy camp. This one is up there.

There was a near miss in St. Andrews in 2022, with the entire town trying to get him home. There was last year’s U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club, when he failed to make a birdie in the final 17 holes and fell short to Wyndham Clark. There was the 2018 Masters when Patrick Reed took him to the cleaners. These were easier events to show your resilience.

In each circumstance, he could convince himself of the plausible belief that he was simply defeated.

There is no such convincing this week.

Only someone who didn’t watch the last four holes of the 124th edition of this tournament would be able to ignore the cold, crushing reality that McIlroy carried with him as he left – a truth written on his face in the scoring tent and in the gravel that pounded the players’ parking lot.

It was Bryson DeChambeau who was paraded with the medal and trophy.

But it was Rory McIlroy who lost the US Open.

Rick Gehman, Patrick McDonald and Greg DuCharme recap the 2024 U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2. Follow and listen to The First Cut on Apple Podcasts It is Spotify.