Bob MacIntyre lost the U.S. Open, but his gesture in defeat told the story

OAKMONT, Pa. — Robert MacIntyre knew before he knew how.

He’d battled through 72 holes of a real, kick-in-the-teeth U.S. Open — through hellish rough and heinous lies, through stifling heat and a driving rainstorm, through birdies and bogeys. And yet, after four brutal days at Oakmont, he’d fallen short.

“I’ve been saying it all week,” he said after a final-round 69 briefly made him the clubhouse leader. “Level par has been the score in my head.”

In the moment, MacIntyre might have allowed himself to believe he was on the precipice of his first major championship. The leaders, still on the golf course behind him, were folding like a cheap cardboard box in Sunday’s monsoon, sloshing through the rough and the mud in a flurry of bogeys. MacIntyre had just completed the only under-par round of the final seventeen groups on U.S. Open Sunday.

But every time MacIntyre looked up at the leaderboard to see himself at 1 over par for the week, he knew. So much so that when someone finally asked him where he’d watch J.J. Spaun and the rest of the U.S. Open leaders as they dredged up the final hill toward the clubhouse, he laughed.

“I might not.”

Of course, he had to watch. He was the clubhouse leader at a major championship. He had no other choice. And so Robert MacIntyre went into the wood-paneled scorer’s room at Oakmont and found a seat in a folding chair, staring down a TV screen as J.J. Spaun stared down the putt of his life.

It was only seconds later that Spaun’s 72nd-hole 60-footer somehow found the bottom of the hole — driving a dagger through MacIntyre’s U.S. Open dreams. And only a few seconds more until NBC flashed MacIntyre’s face to a few million people as he grappled with the fact that he’d fallen shy.

Maybe because MacIntyre knew he was one shot short all along. Maybe because he’d tried not to let his U.S. Open dreams get too far. Maybe because he was as surprised as the rest of us. But when the putt fell and the camera camera caught him, Robert MacIntyre did something interesting: He cheered.

The applause lasted maybe five seconds, joined by a hearty laugh and a one-word response — “Wow.” — but it’d happened too suddenly to be anything other than sincere. Spaun had broken MacIntyre’s heart, but in an odd way, he’d also softened the blow.

“He won the golf tournament,” MacIntyre told GOLF.com nearly a half-hour later. “Fair play. I mean, he’s dreamed of it. I’ve dreamed of it. Everyone’s dreamed of that moment. For him to pour in the winning putt, I mean, nothing I can do. Fair play.”