Rory McIlroy fails to make cut at U.S. Open

Rory McIlroy walked out of the clubhouse at Oakmont Country Club at 2:09 p.m. Saturday, leaving the U.S. Open at the storied course well before most anyone would have predicted.

With a long, narrow box under his right arm and a brown duffle bag in his left hand, he walked alone along a stone path. To his left were life-sized posters of the eight players who have won the national championship at Oakmont, each spaced about four feet apart. They depicted the triumphant faces of some legends, like Jack Nicklaus and Ben Hogan, who conquered the sadistic course.

It was a list of names the gifted Northern Irishman hoped to join by Sunday night. Instead, he briskly walked by each picture, eyes fixed forward as he left a venue that had gutted him the way it had so many others before him.

More than half the field was cut Saturday afternoon at the end of the second round. The list of casualties included many of the usual suspects — the obscure players on the fringes of the PGA Tour, the sectional qualifiers whose greatest accomplishment was even getting to Oakmont — and, surprisingly, the third-ranked player in the world.

A disastrous first-round showing Friday set the stage for McIlroy’s early exit Saturday with an 8-over finish that left him two strokes shy of making the cut. He was one of several elite players not to surpass that decidedly low bar — world No. 5 Rickie Fowler and Phil Mickelson also missed the cut — but nobody’s exclusion raised more eyebrows than McIlroy’s.

“We were kind of all trying to get it going and kind of feed off each other,” Fowler said of McIlroy. “It was unfortunate to see him finish the way he did. I know, obviously, he was kind of trying to fight through some stuff.”

McIlroy’s fate was sealed on his final hole of the day, when he hit his tee shot on the ninth hole into a fairway bunker 158 yards from the pin. His attempt to escape that jam went as poorly as it could have, as his approach shot didn’t clear the bunker and rolled back into the sand. He finished with a double bogey when par would have placed him on the other side of the cut line.

It was an inopportune end to a day that once held so much promise. Coming into the round at 7 over, McIlroy birdied four of his first seven holes. Though still far from serious contention, he appeared to regain the form that was so glaringly absent the day before.

But even before the final hole, his game was already beginning to show cracks. He double bogeyed the par-4 third and bogeyed the par-3 sixth, placing himself in a position where he could ill afford the mistakes that undid him on the ninth.

McIlroy’s 1-over showing Saturday was far from terrible, at least by Oakmont standards, but his opening round simply put him too far behind.

“Honestly, I’ve been struggling with my swing, even the practice rounds a little bit,” McIlroy said Friday after the first round. “I just — I mean, I know what I’m doing, but it’s hard to change it out there.”

McIlroy declined to speak with the media Saturday after the completion of his round.

It marked the first time he missed the cut at a major since the 2013 British Open. Unexpected as they may be, such setbacks happen to even the best golfers, especially in the traditionally unforgiving U.S. Open.

But minutes removed from his nightmarish finish, none of that mattered to McIlroy as he carried his belongings and left Oakmont behind him, fleeing from his troubles as quickly as they arose.

Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG