There was Jordan Spieth walking off the 18th green on Sunday at TPC Sawgrass clapping for the fans who stayed around through a rain delay to watch him and Martin Kaymer finish up the Players Championship.
His applause for them might have been louder than theirs for him.
Such is life as a professional athlete, though -- especially one who just shot a final-round 74 to lose the Players by three.
"When you're at whatever I was, 14-under, and then the winning score is 13-under and, you know, I was there during part of the round, that's tough to swallow," said Spieth after his round.
It was, especially with the golf world begging him to step into those oversized "Heir Jordan" kicks waiting for him sans Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.
The Kid was brilliant all week, going 58 holes without a visible mistake (that is, a square on his scorecard) but he didn't close and, well, that's twice in two months that he hasn't shut down a monster tournament.
We don't have to project his next decade based on these last two tournaments, you know. We like to and some of us have bosses that require us to (I am not among these), but we don't have to.
I wrote after Augusta that Spieth needs to win soon as to not fall into the Sergio Garcia mantra of "always close, never a closer." I still believe in that but I don't believe what he does now necessarily determines what his career will be.
We love to pin labels upon stars (yo, LeBron) and the prevailing pins after the Players are "he definitely can't close!" or "dude, he's 20!"
An alternative: How about we let what he does in the future determine whether the 2014 Masters and 2014 Players Championship were building blocks for greatness or stumbling blocks on the fast track to superstardom.
For now, let's just let them be really fun, really good performances from a 20-year-old.