Only Arnie could have known Rory's pain

Who among us hasn’t wanted to spend just one day as Arnold Palmer? 

Rory McIlroy did that on Sunday. He wouldn’t necessarily recommend it.

When McIlroy awoke Sunday morning, he looked out the hotel room window, and across the first and 18th holes at the Old Course, and he saw the huge yellow scoreboard. He admitted, later, that he visualized his name on top, perhaps with the customary notation: Well Done, Rory, See You All at Hoylake in 2023. 

He knew how that felt. In 2014 he won the Open at Hoylake, a/k/a Royal Liverpool, his third major championship. In a month he would win the PGA Championship and became the third player in history to bag four majors by his 25th birthday. The other two were a stocky blond from Columbus and a skinny, toothy kid from Cypress, Ca. It was not inconceivable, at that time, that McIlroy would threaten both.

McIlroy is now 33. He has not won that fifth major. He had his best chance at the Open Championship Sunday, with tens of thousands in his pocket, bellowing his name and almost bursting from the noise they kept having to repress.

Palmer used to play in front of crowds like that. They watched his shoulders slump, saw him flick away his cigarette ash, when the putts stayed above ground. They mirrored all of his emotions. It is a wonderful privilege and also a suffocating burden. That is probably not why McIlroy came in third Sunday. Champion Cameron Smith and runnerup Cameron Young were responsible for that. But it does beg the question: Are there times when you just have too many people to please?

McIlroy and Viktor Hovland led the field after 54 holes. Smith and Young were four strokes behind. McIlroy quickly moved two shots ahead of Hovland Sunday, but Smith and Young didn’t budge, and then Smith, the Australian who resembles Jerry Mathers with a mullet, incinerated St. Andrews with five consecutive birdies, beginning at No. 10. When Smith improbably saved par at 17 and then birdied 18, he was at 20-under-par, tying the record for any major championship. He beat Young by one, McIlroy by two.

McIlroy shot two-under-par 70. Had you told him he would not miss a green on Sunday, would not make a bogey, and would still lose, he might have flashed one of his sardonic smiles, patted you on the shoulder and walked away. 

His popularity is hard-earned. It lies in his thoughtfulness, his sportsmanship and his perspective. Indeed, he seems to treat Triumph and Defeat, Kipling’s two imposters, just the same. Except defeat was no imposter on Sunday, and he earned that, too, by requiring 36 putts for those 18 holes and hitting only four approach shots within 20 feet of the cup. Meanwhile, Smith was one-putting six greens on the back nine, where he shot 6-under-par 30.

Palmer won seven majors, tightly compressed in a six-year span that ended with the 1964 Masters. At that time he was only 34. He was runnerup in five majors after that and finished second in back-to-back U.S. Opens. That was 1966, when he blew a 7-shot lead with nine holes to go at Olympic and, the next day, faded in a playoff against Billy Casper, and then 1967, when Jack Nicklaus laid out the rules of engagement with a Sunday 65 and a 4-stroke win at Baltusrol.

In trying to win No. 8, Palmer finished third once and fourth three other times, IIn 1970 he lost another bang-bang bid at the PGA, when Dave Stockton wrested away the only major that Arnie never won.

Sunday was McIlroy’s 17th Top 10 finish in a major since that 2014 PGA. Four of those Top Tens came in the four majors of 2022. He has won a Players Championship since then, and a FedEx Cup, and he remains No. 2 in the world, behind Scottie Scheffler. None of those major misses have come because of collapse. He hasn’t really had a faceplant since his Sunday 80 at the 2011 Masters. He won the U.S. Open in record fashion two months later.

But he still has not won a Masters, and unless he can find four great putting rounds, he may never do so. 

Who knows why this one got away? It didn’t help that McIlroy and Hovland, playing together, were both stuck in the mud. Hovland shot 74. The pair was even-par, and every time they looked ahead of them they saw Smith and Young, a Twin-Cam engine, combining to go 15-under-par. Vibes like that are important, and birdies can be contagious. Young, a massive driver who bid strongly for the PGA title, is one of the most impressive PGA Tour rookies in years, and he eagled 18 just to keep Smith honest.

And Smith, 28, is a looming threat to Scheffler’s assumed Player of the Year award. In January, he led wire-to-wire at Kapalua and shot 34-under to snip Jon Rahm, then the world No. 1. In March he won The Players Championship with the nerviest shot of the year, a stiffed tee ball on the island green at 17, and then saved bogey at 18 when his second shot skidded into the water. He shot 66 in that fourth round.

Now this. Smith shot 64 on Friday and Sunday. In the Friday round he sank 251 feet of putts, which no one else had done since that intriguing stat was first kept. But then Smith, in 2020, became the first man in history to break 70 in all four Masters rounds, even though Dustin Johnson won. He did not seem one bit surprised that any of Sunday’s putts went in, so maybe we shouldn't be.

Smith said that his dad didn’t make the trip from Australia because he didn’t want to come all that way for just one week. “He’s kicking himself,” said Smith, who had already computed that he could fit two beers into the Claret Jug and would start working on that Sunday night.

Thanks to Smith, the party was confined to those from Down Under. A victory by McIlroy would have drained every keg in Fife. Instead, McIlroy himself kept his emotions submerged and calmly said he would keep “knocking on the door.” 

He still walks with Kings without losing the common touch. But he’d rather win..