Hole 2 of the Royal Golf Club of Bahrain, par 3. Actually, it’s the eleventh in the second round of Pablo Larrazábal this week in Bahrain. The Barcelona native has been playing well, but hasn’t quite managed to get the results, as he steps onto the tee of that hole with a score of one under. Not bad, but he wants to push harder…
The wind is blowing against and the flag is positioned at 164 metres, so Pablo and his caddie, Raúl Quirós, opt for the 6-iron. He hits in true Larrazábal style on windy days, that punched shot, and the ball goes straight for the flag, lands about five metres from the hole and ends up going in almost on the last or penultimate roll. Hole in one. The round suddenly takes on another dimension and the Spanish player will eventually sign a remarkable score of 68 strokes, placing him at the top of the leaderboard…
It’s Larrazábal’s third hole in one on the European circuit. The first one was achieved almost sixteen years ago (June 2009), at Celtic Manor, during the first round of the Wales Open that year. He was playing then with Miguel Ángel Jiménez (one of the great hole-in-one specialists in golf history, by the way) and did it on the 7th hole, finishing his round.
The second came ten years later, in the second round of the Turkish Open (November 2019) and on the 7th hole of The Montgomerie Maxx Royal. For the third, it has ‘only’ taken five years and a few weeks, but there are those who retire without having made even one.
Moreover, Larrazábal likes to make it clear that he has six holes in one in his career: these three on the DP World Tour, two more he made on the Challenge Tour, and another one he made during a practice round at Valderrama, hole 12. The latter was obviously not official in competition, but Pablo likes to include it. And why not: an ace on the 12th at Valderrama is no small feat.
Now it only remains to be seen if this happy and unusual episode can decisively help the Spanish player achieve his tenth victory on the European circuit, a much more significant milestone, no doubt. For now, he’s on the right track.
