He wondered Joaquín Niemann (+3) this Wednesday in his pre-tournament press conference at the LIV Golf in Chicago, the penultimate of the season in the tour regarding individual competition, how it was possible that after winning five tournaments this year he still hadn’t secured the title. The explanation lay in the consistency of Jon Rahm (-3), who never drops out of the top 10, and above all, in the weeks when he didn’t manage to win, the Chilean barely scored, with very poor results.
With a disadvantage of almost 40 points in the overall standings, the options for the golfer from Barrika to arrive with chances at next week’s event in Indianapolis depended and still depend on a great result this Sunday at the Bolingbrook Golf Club combined with a ‘debacle’ of his rival in the fight for the top spot in the circuit’s order of merit. And the second of the two elements of the equation seems to be happening because Joaco‘s tournament start this Friday has been quite poor.
Everything started to go wrong for him on his tee shot at the par five of the 3rd hole, where even Rahm, with whom he shared the star match alongside Bubba Watson (PAR), helped him look for his ball in the middle of a ‘jungle’. He came out with a bogey, but with a smile on his face because, deep down, he had been quite lucky. However, the joy was completely erased after a triple bogey on the par four 8th that sent him to the bottom of the leaderboard. Once again, the same dynamic, victory… or drama.
Niemann, despite the wind that blew strongly all afternoon, seemed to half-fix his round with two birdies on the 12th and 14th (he closed his round with another on the 18th). However, a bogey on the 16th ended up unsettling him. After a bad swing on the par three of the 17th sending his ball into the bunker, an unusual sight for him was seen, hitting the green hard. Although the worst for Joaquín, more than his mistakes, was seeing how Jon, despite his game from the tee going from better to worse, managed to recover immediately from each mistake and gradually gain strokes on the course.
To the bogey with which the day began for the one from Barrika, missing the fairway to the right, he responded with a very good birdie on the 2nd. With another birdie on the 7th, he went under par, although he failed on the 8th and returned to the starting point. But from there, he managed to tune in on the greens, with a great putt for birdie on the 9th, another to save par on the 10th, and two more birdies, on the 12th and, especially, on the 15th, where he hit his best shot of the day, a great recovery from a rough area next to the fairway bunker to finish holing a one-and-a-half-meter putt.
The result, the Spaniard in the top 5, just one stroke off the lead (he missed a putt for birdie on the 18th), and the Chilean sunk in 45th place tied, out of the points zone and needing to recover his best version over the weekend if he doesn’t want the visit to Indianapolis to become a head-to-head with Rahm for the title. Joaco needs to improve his performance and, why not say it, for Jon not to win this Sunday, a fight for the tournament in which the main rivals for the one from Barrika after these first 18 holes are two old acquaintances…
One of them is Sergio García (-4), for whom the round ended up feeling long after reaching his last three holes as the sole leader with a two-stroke advantage on the board. The one from Borriol retrieved from the depths of memory the Titleist-Scotty Cameron Del Mar 3.5 putter with which he achieved his first victory on the DP World Tour in Ireland more than a quarter of a century ago. A restored club that seems to have given wings to the Spaniard, almost infallible on the greens and with a very orderly game throughout most of his round.
.@TheSergioGarcia stops it on a dime to setup a birdie on 18 🔥
🇺🇸 Tune into @fs1
📲 Stream on the LIV Golf App#LIVGolfChicago @fireballsgc_ pic.twitter.com/KraBBfNkNL— LIV Golf (@livgolf_league) August 8, 2025
Only a bad shot from the tee on the 15th and an error on the 16th, where he made two consecutive bogeys, slowed down the captain of the Fireballs GC, who delivered a remarkable 67 with eight birdies, four of them consecutive, to end the day as co-leader. Alongside him, at the top of the leaderboard, the American Dustin Johnson (-4), who is not having his best season, but this Friday managed to overcome the difficulties posed by the course due to the wind to get into the fight for victory.
Josele Ballester (-2), with a very good round of 69 strokes, gave himself a boost to gradually gain confidence on the circuit. Meanwhile, David Puig (+1), with 72 strokes, was the only Spaniard who did not manage to beat the course, but contributed to the Fireballs GC, with five under par in total, being in the fight for the team victory, just one stroke behind the Stinger GC of the South Africans Oosthuizen, Burmester, Grace, and Schwartzel.
