U.S. Open: Rory McIlroy missed another golden opportunity to finally end major championship drought

LOS ANGELES — Rory McIlroy could only watch from the scoring area behind the 18th green at Los Angeles Country Club on Sunday night. Once again, after battling his way into contention all week, McIlroy’s quest for a major championship win after almost a decade without one had come up short.

That wasn’t the worst part about it. He has felt that frustration, that pain before. It was that, outside of two specific shots Sunday, McIlroy didn’t feel like he did anything wrong.

McIlroy posted an even-par 70 to wrap up his U.S. Open on Sunday night, the first in Los Angeles in 75 years. That left him one shot behind Wyndham Clark, exactly where he started the day. Clark, who played an incredibly steady four rounds of golf to pick up his first career major championship, sealed the win with a tap-in par on the 18th green.

McIlroy, knowing it was coming, didn’t even wait to see it fall.

“As soon as he cozied it up there, I was like, ‘OK, get through this and then go home and regroup,’ ” an emotional McIlroy said.

McIlroy looked about as confident as he’s ever been on Sunday afternoon. He birdied the opening hole easily, and was strolling through the course in the heart of Beverly Hills without much issue. He was hitting fairways and greens, casually chatting with playing partner Scottie Scheffler and getting plenty of good looks at birdies throughout the day.

But they just never went in. Left and right, McIlroy kept leaving birdie chances out on the course — whether it was the 37-foot putt from off the green at the fifth that just lipped out, or the 15-footer at the 10th that went just right of the cup, or even at the last when his shot to tie Clark stopped 20 inches shy of falling.

Sure, there was a putt he misread at the eighth and a wedge shot at the 14th that left him needing relief and eventually sent him to his only bogey of the day that he’d like to have back, but that was it. He tensed up only slightly in the middle of his round, and he was in position to make a run at it right up until the very end as fans packed along the 18th chanted his name over and over.

And that’s why it was so frustrating to come up a shot short of winning a fifth major championship.

“[I’m] not doing a lot wrong, but I didn't make a birdie since the first hole today,” McIlroy said. “Just trying to be a little more, I guess, efficient with my opportunities and my looks.

“Again, overall when you're in contention going into the final round of a U.S. Open, I played the way I wanted to play.”

McIlroy hasn’t won a major championship in 3,234 days. His last win came at the PGA Championship in 2014, which followed up a win at St. Andrews at the British Open that same season. He has accomplished just about everything else since then, including becoming the face of the Tour in its battle with LIV Golf. He just hasn’t won any of golf's four biggest tournaments, something that feels like it’s starting to haunt him. He revealed this past week that he had started looking up old YouTube highlights of his 2014 British Open win, clearly looking for something as he keeps coming up short.

If he continues playing major championships as he has been, McIlroy is going to get another one eventually. He has finished inside the top 10 in seven of his past nine major championship appearances, including two runner-up finishes. He’s right there.

"The more I keep putting myself in these positions, sooner or later it's going to happen for me," he said.

That doesn’t make Sunday night’s result any easier. But when it happens, and he knows it will, it’s going to mean that much more.

“When I do finally win this next major, it's going to be really, really sweet,” he said.

“I would go through 100 Sundays like this to get my hands on another major championship.”