The British Open, where Doug Sanders and Jean Van de Velde still own the rights to wasted opportunity, got a mention, and then there was the Masters and the combined heartache of Greg Norman and Scott Hoch.

But they were accidents from golf 's past. There has never been a pile-up like at Winged Foot last Sunday.

Four of the world's best players will be forever haunted by what happened on a blazing New York afternoon.

Four of the world's best players could have, should have, might have, won America's national championship. So close, they could almost smell the pressed linen covers on the USGA presentation table, and almost see their reflections in the elegant trophy.

Phil Mickelson, Colin Montgomerie, Padraig Harrington and Jim Furyk had their dreams crushed for different reasons. The spectators who thronged the grandstands at the 18th green bore witness to varying degrees of hubris, fear, mental fatigue and crippling indecision. If there had ever been a comparable finish in major championship history, no one could remember it.

A brutally difficult golf course and soaring temperatures took their toll, but this was one of those prolonged moments in sport in which contender after contender was left desperately groping for the prize. This was no dignified conclusion, no tale of courageous shot-making. The four were not playing blind, all having held the lead within sight of the line. They didn't have to be told afterwards what they had squandered.

They knew it as it happened.

They felt the despair.

In 1929, Bobby Jones had the US Open won. With a sixstroke lead and six holes to play at Winged Foot, the expected procession somehow turned into an uncharacteristic stumble. Finally, on the 18th green he had to make a putt to force a play-off with Al Espinosa. Jones succeeded and went on to win the title.

The legend is that the hole that day was cut 19 yards from the front of the green and seven from the right edge. A week ago, the USGA put it in the same place.

Harrington's brush with history was painful. For 15 holes, no one played better last Sunday. As others teetered and righted themselves again, he reeled off 11 pars in succession. But having started four shots adrift of Mickelson, grinding of the utmost quality was not going to be enough, and Harrington needed to make something happen.

He birdied the long 12th, then added another at the 14th hole, and with Mickelson on the slide one more time, when he stepped onto the 16th tee, he was tied for the lead at the US Open with three holes to play.

This was not the same as the British Open at Muirfield in 2002. Back out on the course, Ernie Els was creating some daylight between himself and the field, and so as Harrington prepared for his tee shot on the 72nd hole, he reckoned he needed a birdie.

Choosing a driver instead of a long iron, he found trouble and a bogey. Later came the realisation that a par would have got him in a play-off.

Now, he had an element of control over the tournament, and for the first time in his career, he was a genuine contender in the last contortions of a major championship.

Without a single bogey for 15 holes, he then had three in a row. Coincidence? Can't be.

Winged Foot is the sort of course that wears a player down. Harrington missed both fairways at the 16th and 17th holes, and failed to salvage the situation. Then he threeputted the 18th. No collapse, just a gradual, empty unravelling. Three pars and he would be a major champion today.

Furyk, meanwhile, had been there before. If victory at Olympia Fields three years ago involved infinitely less stress than was in evidence last weekend, he alone of the quartet knew how to win a US Open. And in his own inscrutable way, he too, like his playing partner Harrington, had succeeded in running Mickelson down.

With five holes remaining, Furyk was tied for the lead. A bogey at the 15th was far from terminal, and eventually he found himself with a five-foot putt for a par at the last. Glancing at the giant scoreboard to his left, he couldn't have been sure what the ramifications of success or failure would be, but experienced players have a feel for these things. Furyk was as certain as he could be that the putt wasn't to win the US Open, but it could have given him a chance of a playoff.

Now if you don't know his routine, it looks as if Furyk sets himself to hit the ball, and then backs off. This time as he looked up the green towards the clubhouse, he nervously backed off once, then twice.

The putt never touched the hole, but if it had, and if it had dropped, it would have been enough for a play-off.

"I didn't hit a great putt, but I didn't hit a bad one either, " he said enigmatically.

"Overall, I'm disappointed because I let an opportunity to win the US Open slip by."

A few minutes later, Montgomerie was standing in just about the perfect spot on the right side of the 18th fairway.

A 40 foot birdie putt had snaked its way into the hole on the previous green, and Montgomerie was tied with Mickelson for the lead. One good shot and the bitter memories of two previous second-place US Open finishes in 1994 and '97 might be eased forever.

With 172 yards to the target, and with the Bobby Jones hole position crying out for his trademark floating left-toright shot, surely this was Montgomerie's moment. He fingered a six iron, and then switched to a seven believing that adrenaline would give him an extra 10 yards. The contact was poor, the result calamitous. "He hasn't hit an iron like that in maybe five years . . . really bad, " said NBC's Johnny Miller.

The lie in the matted rough short and to the right of the flagstick immediately brought a double bogey into play. Montgomerie hacked out, and three-putted another major away.

Later, Mickelson, his wife Amy and several close friends were standing outside the clubhouse when a USGA official, who was returning from the presentation ceremony, walked by with the trophy.

Mickelson could have reached out and touched it.

He broke away from the group and signed autographs for about 10 minutes before making the short walk to the players' car park. The light was fading fast at Winged Foot, but Mickelson kept his sunglasses on.

His mind-set going into majors might have changed, but about an hour earlier, Mickelson had demonstrated that a golfer's DNA can never be altered. Having hit just two fairways on the front nine, and none on the back nine, and needing a par at the final hole to win his first US Open, and his third major in a row, he chose a driver and not a four wood off the tee.

Needing to punch a recovery shot back onto the fairway when his tee shot ballooned off to the left, he crashed a three iron from 201 yards straight into a tree.

"Crazy shot selection, one of the worst collapses in US Open history, " groaned Miller.

"Just incredible, no other word for it."

All his intensive practice over Winged Foot's closing holes, all his new-found awareness of how to close out a major, all his caution had come to nought. Mickelson stared down the 18th hole, checked his hand again, and twisted on 20. Parts of the grandstand had already begun to empty before he holed out for a double bogey.

In the aisle of one of the packed trains out of Mamaroneck station, a strange silence was broken when a man asked, "Hang on, who actually won that thing?"

"It was Geoff Oglivy, wasn't it?" someone replied.