khr: Lifting the nil check out of the loop altogether is an admirable
goal, and this rewrite is one step on the way. But without lifting it
out of the loop, the rewrite is just hurting us.

Fixes #14917

Change-Id: Idb917f37d89f50f8e046d5ebd7c092b1e0eb0633
Reviewed-on: https://go-review.googlesource.com/21040Reviewed-by: Keith Randall <khr@golang.org>
Run-TryBot: Alexandru Moșoi <alexandru@mosoi.ro>
TryBot-Result: Gobot Gobot <gobot@golang.org>