Golf: Gutted. Paul McGinley didn't want to find a hiding place. He simply couldn't hide his repugnance at what had unfolded over the leafy fairways in this part of Surrey. It wasn't that the biggest cheque in golf - all €1.5 million (£1 million) of it - had floated tantalisingly within reach; it was that he had failed to answer the tough question coming down the stretch in a major tournament.
As the 38-year-old Dubliner lost out to US Open champion Michael Campbell by 2 and 1 in the HSBC World Matchplay Championship at Wentworth yesterday, he realised fingers would point and suggest that he hadn't properly finished off the job he set out to do.
McGinley was neck-and-neck with Campbell coming to the business stage of yesterday's final, which - as is typical in final showdowns - failed to live up to the quality of golf that had preceded it over the first three days.
But, then, there was more at stake, and while Campbell found out what it takes under such pressure by winning the US Open at Pinehurst in June, McGinley is still searching for that answer.
In the end, it came down to two loose shots at a critical stage - from the middle of the fairway on the 15th and off the tee at the 16th - that led to back-to-back bogeys for McGinley. From being all square coming to the most important part of the final, McGinley found himself two down with two to play. There was no time to find salvation.
"It's quite obvious I hit bad shots under pressure, so that's what people will say. If I was sitting from the outside looking in, I would say the same thing," remarked McGinley, who moved to the top of the European Ryder Cup points list and up to sixth in the Order of Merit.
But such upward graphs were no consolation for letting another tournament title - a big one - slip. Especially after he forced his way back to parity when, at one stage of the final, he had trailed Campbell by three holes.
"If I'm going to win big tournaments, I can't finish the way I finished in this tournament today. I bogeyed 15. I bogeyed 16. There's no getting away from the fact. Okay, I can hide behind the fact that he got lucky on 12 and got lucky on 15, but I'm not going to hide behind that.
"The bottom line is I forced the errors. He got away with having pars and winning holes and that's not good enough at this level if I'm brutally honest about it.
"I fought like hell. I did great to get back in the tournament, but I finished badly and that's what the sour taste is. Having played so well and battled so hard, I basically finished poorly. I'm bitterly disappointed with myself that having fought so hard - because my game went to a new level this week, my mental toughness, everything, went to a new level - that all I'll be remembered for is bogeying 15 and 16.
"It won't be that I showed so much mental toughness in the first three days to beat really tough opponents. I'll just have to regroup and go at it again."
He won't have much time to lick his wounds. He's in action in this week's Seve Trophy, followed by the Dunhill Links at St Andrews and the American Express championship in San Francisco. There's no rest; but this defeat will, you feel, linger.
