Eugenio Chacarra (-3) was the best of the four Spaniards on the first day of the LIV Andalucía and in a very fierce Valderrama, shaken by strong westerly wind gusts. Beyond this national key data, the important thing, of course, is that the Madrid player is currently third in the table, two strokes behind the leader, Dean Burmester (-5) and one behind the second classified, the New Zealander Danny Lee (-4). The young Spaniard’s result has much more merit, no matter how you look at it, precisely because of the complicated playing conditions. There are guys like Bubba Watson (+8), Henrik Stenson (+8), Thomas Pieters (+8), Talor Gooch (+5), Brooks Koepka (+4), Bryson DeChambeau (+3) or Joaquín Niemann (+3), who have not even approached the red numbers or have directly suffered what is not written and have taken a very bulky record to the hotel.
A few words from Burmester, for example, are enough to understand the difficulty of playing even below par today: “to be honest, I don’t even know very well how I was able to play five under par. It was probably one of the best putting rounds I’ve had as a professional. I would stand over the ball and feel like I could do it… I don’t know if that happens often, but not to me, of course. The wind has made things very difficult, among other things because the greens have become hard as rocks and it seemed like we were at a US Open. It’s true that my speed control is usually better on fast greens, but I repeat, I don’t really know how I did five less today.”
Chacarra went out to play today through hole 12, a par 3 that usually gives a lot of problems and that with this strong westerly wind, which blows in favor on that tee, is even more fearsome. “I had two hundred yards, I hit a 7 iron and I went over… At that moment I thought it was going to be a very long day at Valderrama,” the Spaniard explained. However, he managed to tame the beast. And not only that: more than taming it, he has subdued it. He started with a bogey on that hole 12, but soon made a birdie on 13 and then up to five more birdies, also avoiding high numbers (key on such delicate days).
His performance has been huge in what may have been one of the most complicated rounds of his career, if not the most, as the player himself confessed. “My caddie (Xabi Gorospe) and I have done a great job. We told ourselves that everyone was going to make bogeys, that it was going to be a very tough day… I hit good shots, the short game was good and I made good short putts to make the recoveries,” he says. Jon Rahm, who was next to Chacarra in the press conference after the round, looked at him smiling and said “yes, you had to do a lot of things well to play below par today…”.
