At times, after the first hour and a half of play on the opening day of Jon Rahm at LIV Golf, it seemed that a handful of players were truly going to compete to sign a 59, or at least to go up to a 60 or a very few…
And there was Rahm (-5), of course. Who started at Mayakoba, at El Camaleón, with five birdies in his first seven holes. Fresh as a lettuce. But also Sergio García (-6) and Dustin Johnson (-5), with similar or even better early partials. And, of course, Joaquín Niemann (-12), the great winner of the day, who was nine under after his first ten holes, finishing this series with an eagle on hole 11, where he holed from the fairway.
Finally, it would be the Chilean who really faced the great dilemma, that of going under sixty strokes, one that occurs few times in a player’s career. With two holes left to play, he had already reached -12, so, as things were going, as he was playing, even the shadow of a 57 was hovering over the Mexican course. It was then, standing on the tee of the 18th (he was finishing the round by the 1st) when Joaco truly realized the magnitude of his record and it was also then, of course, when he signed his only two consecutive pars of the round.
The exhibition of the captain of Torque, a team that also leads the pack in its classification, almost goes without saying, has been epoch-making. What a way to blow up the field with iron shots. What a way to nail all the par 3s of the course. What a way to get a result, indeed.
Niemann’s thing was something else, but Jon at least had positioned himself to finish in second place on his debut round. However, the Barrika player finished his round in the worst way, with bogeys on holes 17 and 18. Now, like the rest, he just has to wait for the Chilean to suffer from altitude sickness in the next two rounds, because he has truly taken a substantial lead (he is five strokes ahead of the second, Patrick Reed (-7), who finished his round on hole 16 with four consecutive birdies).
We said that Torque leads the team classification with a total of -13, and that despite the bad day of Mito Pereira (+2) and Carlos Ortiz (+5). But Niemann’s 59 has weighed its own, as it could not be otherwise. As for the debut of Legion XIII, the team led by Jon, the truth is that it has not been particularly good. Nor bad: total of -4 and seventh position, nine strokes behind the leaders, Torque. If Rahm’s performance has been more than correct, not so the one of Tyrrell Hatton (+1), even surpassed by the young Caleb Surrat (PAR).
