Third round of a Major. Moving day. No one waits here. You either place yourself or say goodbye. No more. That cruel. That beautiful. Jon Rahm (+7) has said goodbye. He is out of contention for victory at the US Open at Oakmont after carding a 73. Jon knows this better than anyone. That’s why, finishing his round, walking down the 18th fairway, after missing yet another birdie chance on the 17th, he looked to his left, saw Tyrrell Hatton coming down the 15th, and made a gesture of hanging himself. It was his way of waving the white flag after a day of much struggle and little success. This is as far as we’ve come.
Many times numbers don’t tell the whole story. Sometimes, they do. Rahm’s round this Saturday at Oakmont is one of those. He didn’t play that badly. He simply didn’t know how to make the most of his golf, he wasn’t able to extract all the juice. He hit 14 greens, a more than respectable figure. He putted for birdie 14 times, and yes, some were from a long way off, like on the 7th or 16th, but the others were reasonable chances, between two and a half metres, like on the 5th, and seven. Of all those, he only made two, and one of them was a long one, over six metres on the 8th.
On the other hand, he didn’t manage to recover any of the four greens he missed. In fact, his score was +5. Three bogeys (3, 10, and 18) and a double bogey (15). Too much weight in the bad and little harvest in the good. It’s impossible to progress in a Major like that. Rahm assured at the end of the round that today he felt a bit more uncomfortable with the swing, especially from the tee, however, the reality is that he wasn’t that bad. He hit two quite bad shots, on holes 10, the worst of the day with a wedge in hand, and on 15, from the first cut of rough. Then, he missed the fairways on 3, 4, 9, 12, and 18. Of those, the really serious errors were on the 3rd, which cost him a stroke because he had to play it sideways out of the bunker, and the 18th, although he was already waving the white flag. On the 4th, a par 5, he got it back to the fairway and had a good birdie chance, on the 9th he was lucky, ended up in the spectator area and left himself another good birdie chance, and on the 12th, a par 5, you can’t reach in two so it doesn’t change the situation much.
Jon’s problem today, just like yesterday, wasn’t so much in the swing as in the ability to make the most of his opportunities, save the problems when the holes go wrong, and ‘kill’ the birdie chances when they appear. He lacked the killer instinct, precisely one of the main qualities that have adorned him throughout his career. That said, tomorrow Sunday he will go out to fight again and try to make the best round possible. If he manages to extract all the golf he has inside, if he competes like in his best times, he will still be able to deliver a low round and climb up the leaderboard. He has the game.
