During the warm-up prior to the last round of the Soudal Open, Nacho Elvira felt a strange crack in his 2-iron on one of the impacts. He quickly looked at the face of the club and saw that it had cracked. Club rendered useless. The 2-iron is not exactly the club you want to be without when you’re fighting for victory on a course like the Rinkven International Golf Club. It was not just another club, on the contrary, it was a key element in Elvira’s strategy and his caddie David Morago.
Recently, Nacho’s game is more than well-oiled. He has formed a great tandem with Morago and is hitting the ball very well. The only club he is not completely comfortable with is the driver. True, it had worked well this week, but in a final round, with the tension of fighting for victory, you never know where things are going to go…
Well, the 2-iron was the club chosen on several tees, around four depending on the wind. With the 2-iron, Nacho does feel very comfortable, at least much more than with the driver. With that club rendered useless, he had to replace it with the 3-wood and the driver. Morago, in a great effort, tried to downplay it, but in the end it did matter. “I was very uncomfortable with the driver. I don’t know what happened. Maybe it was the 2-iron thing, the fact that it broke, that put more pressure on me, I don’t know, but I was uncomfortable. There were several tees where I didn’t plan to hit the driver and I had no choice,” he assures Ten Golf.
The reality is that it was a serious setback and could have cost him dearly. We will never know if he would have done better with the 2-iron in the bag, but no one doubts it. Be that as it may, he pulled through and won the tournament. “A lot of grit, I showed a lot of grit. The only thing that wasn’t there was the driver, luckily I was able to fix it with the rest. The victory is a relief. I was quite nervous because I wasn’t hitting well from the tee. It was all heart in the last holes because I knew I had a couple of drive holes where I didn’t feel comfortable. I think that chip on the 17th was the key because, although it wasn’t visible on the screen, the ball wasn’t good, it was right on a lettuce,” he explains.
Elvira is especially proud of the last putt on the 18th. He was close to getting in and left it given for par. “I knew that if I made the putt on the last hole I would win. I learned a bit from the past. At Celtic Manor (the last time I won in 2021) I hit it too far and didn’t make the return putt, so I knew I had to make a good putt. Try it, but without being too greedy. It looked like it was going to go in and ended up staying on the edge, but the final result was also good for me,” he points out.
The Spanish golfer highlights the work of the European Tour on a very difficult day due to the large amount of rain that has fallen. “I tried not to get wet (during the suspension in play). It was pouring and we waited 30 minutes, but congratulations to the circuit and course team because they did a fantastic job. They kept us on the course knowing what would happen and so it was,” he points out.
Nacho admits that he had to pull it off with plan B. “When you hit well, everything seems easy. When you don’t, everything seems very complicated. I told my caddie, for some reason I didn’t feel good today, maybe a mix of emotions. My wedges and my putt were on point, but from the tee I was struggling. I tried to keep it in play somehow and it paid off. It’s special to win with my brother here, especially because I’ve tried to teach him that this game doesn’t reward you every week, you have to be patient. I hope he’s learned something from this and keeps pushing,” he concludes.
