Southern H(e)lls

 We've all stood where young Mito Pereira of Chile stood late yesterday afternoon. OK, so we haven't.

None of us ever stood on the 72nd tee with a one-shot lead in our very first major and tried not to think about it, which of course means it's all Pereira was thinking about. He couldn't help it, surely, because all he had to do was get up and down on the par-4 18th at Southern Hills and the PGA Championship was his.

He'd just missed going to 18 with a two-shot lead after missing a 12 1/2-foot putt on 17. Now, at 18, he took the same cut at the ball he'd taken 24 hours earlier, one which landed him safely in the fairway.

OK. So it wasn't the same cut.

This was more a weird swipe we all have seen before, because it looked like the sort of swipe every weekend hack at Hit-A-Tree Golf Course has taken a zillion times. And the ball did what it always does when that happens, which is stick out its tongue at the fairway and slice right and sail into a creek without regard for your feelings.

From there, Pereira took a drop and then skimmed his ball across the green and off the other side, and then two-putted for a double bogey. And suddenly he finished tied for third while Justin Thomas and Will Zalatoris went off to a three-hole playoff Thomas ultimately won.

They say majors are lost as much as won, but this was the rare occasion when it was both lost and won. Pereira lost it in the most excruciating manner possible, of course. But Thomas won it in the most miraculous manner possible, considering he was seven strokes behind with six players in front of him when the day began.

But he birdied 11 and birdied 12 and birdied 17, and finished with a 67. Pereira staggered home with a 4-over 75; the two players in his immediate wake at the start of the day, Zalatoris and Cameron Young, both shot even-par 71s.

So, yeah, it was Southern Hells and Southern Heaven, both at once. Let the theologians sort that one out.