Bob MacIntyre always was a class act, now his golf is of highest class too
Sitting in a wood-panelled scoring building at Oakmont, Bob MacIntyre watched and hoped for a play-off. His fate was in the damp and sweaty hands of JJ Spaun, but the American needed a par on the testing 18th hole to beat him.
The longest putt of the tournament ushered in a birdie and what the winner called a 'fairytale', but the next few moments defined why MacIntyre is such a likeable figure. In those raw seconds he sucked in the drama rather than the disappointment, clapped his hands and said 'wow' at the TV screen. Not long after he added two more words. 'Fair play.' And it was. Fair play — and a bit fantastic, too.
Of course, this will sting. MacIntyre, 28, read Oakmont better than most all week and had predicted even par would be the winning score, so he was also close in that regard — Spaun finished on one under; MacIntyre one over. After the Scotsman had finished, other contenders started to encounter all sorts of trouble. Only Spaun, heroically defiant, remained.
But MacIntyre's magnanimity in the Sunday night gruel was something to cherish. Not long before Spaun made his enormous 64ft putt, the longest by anyone all week, MacIntyre had happily fielded a few questions. He was asked how he had spent the 90-minute weather delay? 'I went up to the locker room, stole an air conditioning unit and pointed it towards my shirt to dry it off,' he said. It was suggested the dire weather would be no problem for a man raised in the coastal town of Oban. 'Fair-weather golfer now I've moved to the PGA Tour,' he deadpanned. More significant was the answer when asked if anyone had given him some words of wisdom during that hiatus. 'Not one thing,' he said. 'I'm a guy who believes.'
This is the second uplifting act of grace by a defeated British golfer in recent times. At the Masters, Justin Rose cut an admirable figure as he buried his hurt to embrace Rory McIlroy at the top of his Everest. Rose was MacIntyre's Ryder Cup mentor and partner in 2023, when they were unbeaten in Rome. MacIntyre said he felt that he had let Rose down as they halved a match with Wyndham Clark and Max Homa, but he made up for it and then beat Clark in the singles.
Fast forward and Clark has not been covering himself in glory of late. At last month's US PGA he flung a club at an advertising hoarding, breaking his driver and scaring a volunteer 'to death'. He apologised. This week, he was allegedly responsible for trashing members' lockers in the historic Oakmont clubhouse. Clark is a US Open winner but would be a more impressive man if he could be more Bob.
After the result started to bite, MacIntyre spent some time with his tight support team, including girlfriend Shannon and long-term manager Iain Stoddart. They all know how significant this week has been. It is not as though MacIntyre has not had big victories — he won the Scottish and Canadian Opens last year — but playing so calmly in the context of a major that was proving too much for the biggest names showed a new strata of grit.
He has always been a creative player and hinted at his DNA after the opening round here. While others, to borrow from veteran coach Pete Cowen, wore a 'dog's dead' expression, MacIntyre was brimming with enthusiasm for the fray. Did he have, erm, fun? 'I absolutely did because I like hitting crazy shots. I've just got to ride the horse and let the horse go at times,' he said.
Sometimes this approach means superb birdies are quickly undone, but the 'roll the dice' method is thrilling. And to be three under par for his final 15 holes, and bogey free for his last dozen, was proof he can succeed in different ways.
Only 63rd out of 66 finishers in terms of driving distance, he was fifth in accuracy off the tee. On the PGA Tour he is a top 15 player tee-to-green. He is now up to No12 in the world rankings, fourth in the Ryder Cup rankings, a shoo-in for Bethpage.
Almost the first left-hander to win the US Open, he is different from most tour pros. Unafraid to air his struggles, he admitted he was homesick after joining the PGA Tour. When he made his breakthrough at the Canadian Open last summer, he had his dad, Dougie, as his stand-in caddie. 'I'm a grasscutter, no a caddie,' said MacIntyre Sr, the head greenkeeper at Glencruitten Golf Club. His son said one of the best things about his success was it meant his parents could pay off the mortgage for their home which backs on to the course.
His parents have clearly grounded him, and growing up with foster siblings means that in a world of inflated prize funds he knows the difference between price and value. 'I've been in tears over it, kids going away from you,' he once said.
There are lots of snippets that reveal his character. In 2021 he wore a black ribbon at the Masters, a tribute to the veteran golf writer Jock MacVicar, who had died. When he returned from the United States, MacIntyre drove 95 miles from Oban to the tip of the Kintyre peninsula to stand on the roadside and pay his respects as the funeral cortège passed; the funeral party had been restricted to 20. Another? At the Phoenix Open in February he tossed rolled up Oban Celtic shinty shirts into the well-oiled crowd. Each had $20 attached and the note: 'Get yourself a couple of beers. Cheers — B-Mac.'
Oakmont was not a normal major course, but MacIntyre now has four top-tens at the majors. His previous best? A sixth at Royal Portrush in 2019, which just happens to be the venue for next month's Open.
He believes he can do it now and that is not as easy as it sounds, but part of what makes an indelible sporting finale is the skill and reaction of the defeated. And he was not alone in losing well. Tyrrell Hatton gets a lot of flak, but he was being interviewed as Spaun nailed his putt of dreams. 'Oh, he's holed it,' he said as he watched a TV over reporters' shoulders. 'Unbelievable.' Then he broke into a wide, natural smile. 'What a putt to win!'
Without rankings points on the LIV circuit, Hatton can take solace from his fourth place lifting him to second in the Ryder Cup rankings. The countdown for that will begin in earnest after the Open, but the pureness of respect for Spaun's victory bridged tribal boundaries. Cue Viktor Hovland's assessment of Spaun's trio of brilliant putts on the 12th, 14th and 18th: 'Just absolutely filthy.'
Spaun, 34, is another who can mine his past for perspective. 'I've had slumps at every level,' said the man from LA. 'Last year in June it was looking like I was going to lose my job and I thought, 'If this is how I go out I might as well go down swinging'. That's kind of the mantra I've had all year.'
In 2018 he was misdiagnosed with type 2 diabetes and said that trauma contributed to losing his PGA Tour card. Three years later he was re-diagnosed with type 1, by which time he had fallen outside the world's top 500. He is now up to No8. Believing he was done, he watched the rom-com Wimbledon last year, about a washed-up tennis pro who keeps fighting and wins the eponymous tournament, and said it convinced him to keep going.
Close at The Players, where he lost the play-off to McIlroy, he had a shocking start on Sunday, dropping five shots in six holes, but the day had been complicated even before that. 'I was running to CVS [pharmacies] in downtown because my daughter had a stomach bug and was vomiting all night long,' he said. 'It was kind of a rough start to the morning. I'm not blaming that on my start, but it kind of fit the mould of what was going on — the chaos.'
Chaos and class: that is a pretty potent cocktail for anyone craving sporting gold.
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