It could not kill off Scottie Scheffler, the world number one who lived up to words like inevitable that don't often belong in golf. He has now won the Masters twice and he's only played in it five times. What's more, he can play better than this. Scheffler made some mistakes along the way and appeared vulnerable during both weekend rounds. He was vulnerable. But to beat Scheffler you have also to beat Augusta, and they could not.
For Aberg, it was one swing, at the 11th. Ten yards left of where he'd have liked it, that pull cost him two shots. Homa did the same thing with a different club at the 12th and while unfortunate perhaps to drop two, would've known with the ball in the air that he was almost certain to drop one. From that moment, his first attempt at winning a major championship was over. Just two holes earlier it had been very much on.
Morikawa had already dropped two shots at the ninth and the two more he let slip at 11 merely confirmed that he, a two-time major champion, had run his race. Scheffler is now level with him and without question the best player in the sport by some distance. Not since Tiger Woods won the Masters in 2005 has an annual grand slam been more likely, even if it is still unfathomably difficult to actually go out and do.
If anyone can, it's Scheffler, who hits it long and straight and controls the distance of his approach shots like Morikawa only better, like Woods has for most of his career. In the end, that ability made sure that when his rivals faltered, he capitalised: Scheffler birdied the ninth from two inches, the 14th from perhaps two feet.
But if anything really illustrates what makes him so much better than everybody else right now, it might be the one shot he dropped coming in, at the same hole where Aberg and Morikawa found water. Scheffler also missed that green, but he missed it on the right, where there's a limit to the damage this course can do. Then, at the 12th, where Homa's pull flew into a bush, Scheffler hit his ball within a foot of his intended distance.
Scheffler may not give much away but he is no metronome. He dances when he hits his driver and has an artist's hands around the green. He's a thrilling golfer to watch in many ways, but the trouble with thrilling golfers, when they're as good as he is, is that they can take some of the fun out of a tournament. That in the end is what he did here and it's what he'd done two years earlier. Few have been able to enjoy the greatest walk in golf as much as he has even once, and now he's done it twice.
Those behind him have much to be encouraged about. Aberg might wish to know that Jordan Spieth also finished second to a second-time champion here a decade ago, returning 12 months later to win a Green Jacket. Homa has gone from the game's biggest under-performer in majors to stitching together successive top-10s. Morikawa will know, when the dust settles, that he's back on the right track, and Tommy Fleetwood has his first notable Masters result.
That's golf for you: finding the positives in defeat. Everybody loses at this game more than they win, even if right now it looks like Scheffler may never lose again. What an astonishing player he is to deliver the inevitable in a game where fractions and fortune gnaw away at talent. He might well collect a few more of these, and who knows, he might well have more majors by the time he plays in the Masters again.
