Oh, Rory

Maybe it's just not supposed to happen for him. That's what the mystics would say.

Not being conversant with fate or destiny or perhaps second sight, all I could do yesterday, watching Rory McIlroy give away another major, was gasp when those two teensy putts slithered past the jar on 16 and 18. The first erased what was left of a two-stroke lead; the second handed the U.S. Open to a wonderfully giddy Bryson DeChambeau.

DeChambeau made the shots Rory couldn't down the stretch, including that remarkable save for par on 18 that sent him howling to the heavens. The guy was in jail, absolute jail, with his ball resting under a tree against a root in Pinehurst No. 2's hinterlands; then he was in jail again when his shot from there skittered across the fairway and landed in a bunker 55 yards from the cup.

No worries. DeChambeau just pulled out a wedge, took a measured swipe at the ball, and it fetched up four feet or so from the pin. It was all cake from there.

And Rory?

He fled the premises, and the questions from the media, as soon as DeChambeau's putt dropped, a chickenstuff exit for which we should be willing to forgive him. It has, after all, now been a decade since he won his fourth and last major, and again Sunday he had a fifth in hand until he didn't.

Until, after dueling DeChambeau all day in the North Carolina sun, he missed two putts inside three feet for the first time since, I don't know, disco was in. And again I was reminded of something a friend said once when golf bit him in the ass: "It's an evil game."

True then. True now.