Eugenio Chacarra (-2) didn’t win today’s match against Valderrama (round of 72 strokes, one more on the day), but the damage is repairable, among other things because the Madrid player is still in the fight for victory with the last round to go and, of course, with the permission of Anirban Lahiri (-7), the outstanding leader of the tournament and on whom the rest depends.
Indeed, a 72 at Valderrama should hardly be categorised as a bad round of golf or a step back. Much less if you take into account that Chacarra received a severe punishment on hole 1, the first of his round, where a chain of mistakes and bad luck condemned him to the double bogey: distance between clubs on the second shot, ball to the bunker that stays in an ugly position, two attempts to get it out of the sand trap…
However, the stumble was not going to dent the mentality of a player who this week is set in granite. He is aware, among other things, that he needs to score points and there are fewer tournaments left to do so (after the LIV Andalucía there will still be three more scoring tests for the individual ranking of the Saudi league). He has a margin, of course, but it is much better to shore up the objectives as soon as possible and, above all, to take full advantage of a good week of play like the one he is starring in.
And what objective are we talking about? Firstly, getting into the top 24 of the LIV ranking, a position that would guarantee him at least one more year in the Saudi league, because we must also remember that the Spanish player’s contract ends this very season. In his case, therefore, it is a mandatory requirement.
Right now Chacarra is in 41st place in the ranking, 21.65 points from the 24th place that opens the ‘safety zone’, so he would need something like a solo third place this week, which gives 24 points, to get in or at least very close, always depending also on what other players add or stop adding. In any case, anything that ended up above, in the hot zone, would bring him closer to that top 24 bar, waiting to finish the job in the next three tests (the fourth place, for example, gives 18 points, and the fifth, 16).
