The silence was so stunning because of the scale of the preceding din.
After 68 years of waiting for the return of The Open , home hero Rory McIlroy was welcomed on to the first tee to deafening applause.
One hooked 2-iron out of bounds later, all the noise was abruptly replaced by initial bewilderment and then a sense of shock and confused quiet. Talk about sucking the air out of a room.
This was the world No.3 sucking the air out of a nation.
After 14 painful minutes and eight shots on his card – including another penalty shot after hacking his fourth shot into a gorse bush – the party atmosphere had turned into a funeral procession. After all the excited build-up, McIlroy’s home Open was all over after one nightmare hole.
It was not meant to end this way.
The Ulsterman had admitted he would cry if he lifted the Claret Jug on home soil but the only tears on Thursday morning were for the poor punters who had backed him before his eight-over par round of 79.
All week, the talk had been about the affect of the fervent crowd here.
Tony Jacklin claimed McIlroy could “feed off” the fans, while Justin Thomas warned it could be overwhelming.
The four-time Major winner had tried to deflect away the attention in his pre-tournament press conference by claiming he was not the “centre of attention” and: “I’m just treating this like any other Open Championship.”
He was not even able to fool himself.
Despite his denials, hitting a female spectator off the tee was failing to handle the pressure.
Pulling his second tee shot, finding a gorse bush and then missing his first putt from eight feet only added to the evidence.
Even at the age of 30 – and after employing meditation techniques and striving to add consistency to his game – he is still a highly emotional man with a golf game to match.
When he is hot, he is hot. And then sometimes he is not.
And he is often as unpredictable as the Irish weather.
After he dropped another shot at the third hole after duffing a chip, he was five-over par and his shoulders were already slumped. It was like watching a replay of his his final-round Masters meltdown in 2011.
He caught his first break at the fifth with a free line-of-sight drop and then picked up his first birdies at Nos 7 and 9 before a run of six consecutive pars.
Then he finished as he started.
He confessed he “lost concentration” as he four-putted the 16th – including missing from a foot.
“I’m sort of talking to myself about the last putt,” he said. “It’s not like my head is going to Kelly’s tonight or something (laughter). But I’m berating myself about the putt I just hit and went to tap it in and didn’t.”
That 2-iron let him down again on the 18th and he could not get out of the rough with his second shot on the way to a closing triple-bogey seven. His reception on the last green was more sympathetic than ear-splitting.
So had the expectation weighed him down? McIlroy denied he was in denial.
“I don’t think it was that,” he said. “Look, I was nervous on the first tee. But not nervous because of that.
“Actually hit the ball out of bounds right yesterday on the practice round. That might have been in my head a little bit, not sort of wanting to leak it out to the right.”
At least he could smile.
Asked if there was a way back from a 79, he laughed: “Definitely a way back to Florida!”