Rory McIlroy's Masters failure only natural - ESPN →

“Failure is the default setting of everything we know. Of everything human. Sports. Politics. Science. Art. To win is the rarity. To exceed, to transcend, to excel, to make something beautiful or lasting is a singularity. This is how and why we make legends and heroes.

To create order or peace or empathy or warmth or comfort or joy is nearly impossible. Day in, day out we try to do these things, and we fail. In almost every case, we simply remain as we were. As we are. Human. Flawed. Earthbound.

This is the natural order of things. There is no malice in it, just the indifferent turning of the Earth. The only cruelty is human. The only absurdity the question, “What happened out there?” or “How does it make you feel? “

And to call what happened to Rory McIlroy a collapse is to miss the larger point of the human experiment. It was not catastrophe; it was just a return. An explorer came back to us, having found only himself. It was a homecoming.”