A special lad. That’s David Puig (+3). It’s worth repeating over and over. The lad from La Garriga never ceases to amaze time and time again. After securing his place in the Games, it wasn’t easy to take to Pinehurst Nº2 today. A lot of built-up tension, a lot of joy released. It’s only natural that there could have been a letdown. Quite the opposite.
“Singular or particular, that differs from the common or general”. This is the definition that the RAE offers for the adjective special and today, once again, we can categorise the Catalan player within this category. It’s not a gratuitous compliment. If anyone is still not entirely convinced, take a look at the data we present to you below.
Today, Saturday, on the moving day of the US Open 2024, David has once again handed in a card below par which, by the way, puts him within the top thirty of the tournament. It’s the second consecutive round this week that David has scored under 70, following the -2 recorded on Friday. Playing under par at Pinehurst is a very complicated task, but beating the course twice is practically a feat.
A total of 511 different golfers have played the four editions of the US Open held on this course and only twenty have managed, so far, to beat the course twice in the same edition and only 16 have managed to link two consecutive days under par. David has become the seventeenth. That is to say, Puig has today joined an exclusive club to which only 3.32 percent of the golfers who have played the US Open on this course belong. It’s no small feat. A certain Tiger Woods, for example, has not achieved this in any of his three participations.
We have the first one. Another example that helps to see that something different that David Puig has was his tee shot on hole 7, a dogleg to the right with a flag placed at 380 metres. Most players opt to play an iron or a wood to the centre of the fairway and leave themselves an intermediate shot to try for the birdie from there. The more daring and those who have the distance to do so, can consider an aggressive line jumping the vertex of the dogleg to leave it near the green. The shot, obviously, is complicated and requires great precision, as you run the risk of not overcoming the rough on the right or crossing over on the left.
At the time of finishing Puig’s round, only five players had attempted this aggressive line: one, obviously, the Spaniard, and the other four were Cameron Young, Wyndham Clark, Sahith Theegala and Min Woo Lee. Well, Puig and Lee were the only ones who managed to leave it on the fairway. With a slight nuance in favour of the Catalan. He left his ball 36 metres from the flag and the Australian 75. A monstrous shot. A pity he couldn’t take advantage of that great tee shot, as he made a bogey after a bad first putt.
On hole 13, there is a similar situation, although in this case more players have attempted the feat. Once again, David’s shot was an immaculate drive of exactly 300 metres that left him less than 30 from the hole. Here he was able to take advantage and he holed the fourth birdie of the day. Because gentlemen, that’s another thing, the ability of the 22-year-old lad to subtract strokes from the course is very notable.
We have the second one. Another one. The third. He has eleven birdies in the current edition of the US Open and only the amateur Neal Shipley and Tom Kim surpass him with twelve at the time of publishing this article.
The fourth. Speaking of great shots, without a doubt, the best one David hit today was on the tee of hole 15, par 3, 196 yards, flag on the left side of the green. As I said, his best shot of the day and also the best shot seen today on that hole until his arrival. Straight, like a ruler, the ball bounced in the perfect spot and rolled a few metres to end up just a metre to the right of the flag. At that moment, only three players had made a birdie on this tough par 3.
For the fifth we go to the back of the green of the 3, a par 4 to which today they have moved the tee forward to encourage players to go for the green in one. Puig, of course, went for it. His drive was so good that he flew the green and ended up on a dirt path that separates the greens of the 5 and the 3. Well, the approach was very delicate. He was a bit lucky because the ball rested on a part of the path that had more dirt, so there was a certain cushion underneath. Even so, you had to do it very well to get it close. That’s when the magic hands of the Spanish golfer appeared. He used the 58-degree wedge and left it dead about four metres away. As if that wasn’t enough, he made the putt, just on the last turn. Brutal. “I think it was the best up and down of my life,” he confessed to his caddie Alberto Sánchez as he left the 4th tee.
Do you still need more arguments to convince yourself that David is made of special stuff? The Catalan, just after finishing his round, spoke to Ten Golf and with great simplicity and no arrogance in his tone pointed out: “Well, the truth is that the course is very complicated, but for me, today I found it quite easy”. Do you need any more proof?
