As I said in my review of this year’s Masters, which anyone who isn’t related to Scottie Scheffler has already forgotten about, golf, now more than ever, needed its heroes and villains to show up and provide theatre that made the game forget itself and its countless issues for at least one week. It got that, this week at Pinehurst #2, in a plentiful dose. Of course, I’m not here to pick sides, although for whom one was rooting, between Rory and Bryson, essentially exposes all that one needs to know about a person.
Make no mistake, the crowd, which the newly polished and PR’d Bryson played to throughout the week, was an utter disgrace, as it serenaded the scene with “USA, USA” and other ferule chants that should be reserved for beer pong games, as was the brand of golf where 9 irons and wedges were routinely hit into 540 yard par 4s. However, I, like everyone, was glued to the action, feeling as tense as Rory did as soon as he got a two shot lead, a lead that seemed not a matter of “if” but “when” he would relinquish. Although I never once thought that he would win, I didn’t see him losing his second Us Open title because of two missed from inside of four feet.
I presume that anyone who’s ever played competitive golf could sense, at least to a certain extent, what Rory was going through over the course of the final five holes. Rather than play golf, one simply feels as if they are trying to steer a tethering ship to safety. Like on choppy waters, what normally seems routine, what would normally seem to get knocked merely a tad wayward now seems to get propelled tenfold. Everything becomes magnified. Under such pressure, you become hyper aware of every muscle, every move, every position, every imperfection around the ball, every mark on the green. Hence why Rory, before pulling the trigger on the seventeen tee, suddenly halted, bent over, flicked something away, and started anew. Normally, I can guarantee you that whatever that was would not have bothered him. When it did, however, I instantly told the people with whom I was watching that he would not make a good swing, and I was astute, as yet another quick pull hopped into the left bunker.
It wasn’t exactly the world’s most difficult prediction to make, mind you. Just look at his full swings once he took the lead on 13. On the 14th: a hard tug from the tee, then a scoopy miss left on approach. On the 15th: a quick draw that was simply too hot and bounced over. On the 16th: a good drive followed by a safe, albeit tugged, short iron. On the 17th: a tug with a mid iron.
I’m far from a swing expert, but Rory’s swing has always been centred around two hyper fast moving fulcrums: that of his shoulders and that of his midsection and hips. Under no pressure, he manages to time the two rotations so that they produce the high, towering draw we’ve come to admire, with that signature, slightly rerouted inside-to-out downswing. With pressure, however, his body becomes tense and, like most, he gets quick, meaning that the lower fulcrum rotates too quickly, dragging the upper fulcrum with it and causing the hard, comparatively lower tug that we saw on every full swing after about 5:15 pm. I’m sure that David Leadbetter or Sean Foley could offer more analytical breakdowns, but that’s the basic explanation for his ball-striking struggles down the stretch.
The role of the caddie, especially compared to the spotlight scrutinized upon coaches in other sports, seems to be undervalued in golf, which is widely, yet erroneously, viewed as an individual sport. It’s not, however, and the caddy’s role is just as vital as Pep Guardiola’s for Man City or Paul Maurice’s for the Florida Panthers. Unlike in most other sports, too, the caddy can literally talk the player through his decision while standing right beside him. To make good decisions and then produce a good result requires a measure of composure, both from the caddy and from the player, of course. A caddy’s first and foremost job is to get his player confident, comfortable, and relaxed before the shot.
Today, as the lead dwindled while Bryson also did his best to assure that his opponent had every chance to lift the trophy instead, Harry Diamond, Rory’s lifelong friend, with whom he has won zero majors since he took up the loop in 2017, once again failed to do so. Rory’s routine, as evidenced by the abnormal time that he took before pulling his two footer on the 16th green, didn’t stay consistent, nor did he ever appear to be relaxed, at ease with where he stood and what was at stake. You could read the tension on his reddened, sweat-moistened face.
Yet Diamond’s biggest failure came on the ultimate hole. After Rory made a clutch save from the bunker and strode to the nearby 18th tee, Diamond, rather than be near his player in this crucial moment, spent a good deal of time raking the bunker that Rory had just hit from, and deftly so. I get that this is good etiquette, but the entire USGA operation was centered around this green, surely a volunteer in the crowd could have taken care of it instead. At that moment, Diamond should have been with his player, calming him, talking through the next shot, not raking the bunker.
The second and most crucial mistake, however, occurred during their club selection, which occurred just as Bryson chased a looping draw that managed to hold the treacherous seventeen green forty feet to their right. The 18th fairway at #2 slopes quite severely from left to right, and Rory, like most, opted to try to peel a driver off the left side native area. Once again, as I watched him pull driver, I told my friends that there was no chance that he was going to slow his move enough to be able to execute the desired cut with the driver. His natural move simply requires too much manipulation, of tempo and path, to do so at that most pressurized of moments. And remember, by this point, he hadn’t made a full swing that hadn’t gone left in more than an hour. It wasn’t going to happen there.
Had Diamond been up to the task, he would have advised Rory to hit a lesser club, like a 3 wood, and draw it into the hill, deadening the run. That had been Rory’s shot pattern for the last 5 holes. Moreover, a 3 wood would have then left him probably a pitching wedge at most.
Finally, once he squirmed his ball through the tuft of wire grass and then slightly necked his pitch to four feet or so, Diamond should have told Rory to hit it with speed, to not give the hole away. They had to assume, there and then, that Bryson, despite being left, was not going to make a bogey; as such, Rory’s comeback putt should not have mattered. Make it for a playoff: simple and straightforward as it gets. Rather, he borrowed too much and under-hit the putt.
Now, one major from a decade since his last win, I fear that there is simply too much scar tissue layered upon those now so long ago triumphs, as if they were won by a totally different person. After all, he is now 35, and most men hardly recognize the person that they were in college, which was Rory’s age, or thereabout, when he left Congressional, Valhalla, Kiawah, and Hoylake with silverware in grasp.
