A legendary U.S. Open changed 2 superstars’ career trajectories

The past 12 months had it all — crazy winning streaks, new major champs, a major-week arrest (!) and more. With 2025 on the horizon, our writers are looking back at the most memorable moments from 2024.

No. 15 — Charley Hull goes viral | No. 14 — LIV, LPGA CEOs say goodbye | No. 13— Solheim Cup parking fiasco | No. 12 — Phoenix Open chaos | No. 11 — Lydia Ko’s Hall of Fame resurgence | No. 10 — PGA Tour/Saudi PIF merger stalemate | No. 9 — Keegan Bradley named Ryder Cup captain | No. 8 — Lexi Thompson stepped away | No. 7 — Xander Schauffele’s breakthrough | No. 6 — AK’s return to golf | No. 5 — Nelly Korda’s dominance | No. 4 — Bryson DeChambeau’s star turn | No. 3 — Scheffler’s mind-boggling season

Biggest golf moments of 2024 No. 2: Rory and Bryson’s U.S. Open epic

The great magic of Sunday at golf’s major championships is not history, but possibility.

It is tempting to believe the inverse is true. History, after all, is what gives our major championships meaning. It is why a green jacket at the Masters resonates more than a plaid blazer at the RBC Heritage, why a Claret Jug is more valuable than a FedEx Cup, and why Tiger versus Jack is a legitimate conversation point rather than a cockeyed theoretical. Possibility, on the other hand, fills the historical footnotes of every golf tournament since the beginning of time, littering the margins of the history books in small fonts tucked beneath the bold-faced names of victors.

But history is not why there is magic in the air on Sunday at the majors. History is our accounting of the magic, our way of indexing it for future reference. The magic is what comes before it.

The magic is a feeling of weightlessness, like a roller coaster pitching over a steep drop. It is a cloud of static electricity, building silently but noticeably in the air like a late-summer storm. It is something instinctual, gutteral, drawing from the same primal energies that power the cosmos. On major championship Sundays, the magic is the-moment-before-the-moment. We know history is arriving soon, but we’re still hazy on the details of when? and how? and for whom?

That feeling of anticipation, of knowing and not-knowing, of the intermingling forces of fate and free will? That’s magic. And on Sunday at the U.S. Open last June, it crested over Pinehurst like a tidal wave.

It is hard to remember how close we were to a different history. A few one-millionths on the X-and-Y-axes, maybe. Maybe less. But as Rory McIlroy stormed to the 14th tee box with the lead in hand, our since-forgotten history was as certain as certain could be: the streak was over. Rory McIlroy was a major champion again.

We thought the story had unfolded for us already. Four birdies in five holes at the turn of a golf course firmer than granite — the exact kind of Rory Sunday charge that had fizzled like a lit match in a pond at a dozen or more major championship over the last decade. A one-shot lead with three to play, no surefire birdie holes. McIlroy had seized possibility, now he could break out his tried-and-true playbook with old-man par and coast his way into history.

The unraveling began quickly. A roasted tee shot into the par-3 15th, one club too many, which bounced high and far over the green. A bogey. Another roasted tee shot on the 16th, a safe iron shot. A birdie putt to 2.5 feet, leaving a no-doubter for par to preserve a one-shot lead. Hit the putt and win the tournament. McIlroy felt “discomfort.” He pulled it. Tied heading into 17. Survival from the left bunker on 17, then a too-eager chip from the mouth of the green on 18, leaving a twisting, tumbling 3.5-footer for birdie that lipped out for bogey. Four holes, 45 minutes, three bogeys, and the course of golf history — all changed.

McIlroy suffered the most utterly devastating defeat in recent golf history, while Bryson DeChambeau, who did little more than par his last three holes, emerged as the triumphant victor.

It took months before the full scope of those 45 minutes came into clear view. McIlroy had not just lost the U.S. Open, he had ceded it in a way that rewrote the rest of his last decade of major championship torment. Was it possible that the greatest golfer of his generation had not lost but choked? And what did choking, in this moment with this much on the line, mean for his standing among the greatest ever to play the game?

Meanwhile, DeChambeau had not just won the U.S. Open but revolutionized golf, ushering in a new era of the sport under its new greatest showman. DeChambeau was not just a lightning rod, he was a lightning rod on a historic trajectory, embodying a new generation of golfing greats with an undeniably magnetic persona. He was not just a relevant player but a great one, with plenty of time still to establish himself as an all-timer.

An inch-and-a-half on a two-foot-putt, a club less on a par-3, a few revolutions fewer on the 18th green and these stories are different.

McIlroy and the rest of the golf world will reckon with this possibility for some time. And there is something beautiful in that reckoning. There would be no intrigue in what is without what could have been.

The magic is in the possibility. The rest, as they say, is history.