– Can there be anything more important for a golfer than beating Tiger Woods in a singles match of the Ryder Cup, which is also a point of enormous weight to tip the balance in the overall score? You would have to ask them, the top-level players. Normally, with a cool head, they would tell you that winning a Major should be more important. And probably also winning the Olympic gold, now that the best players have realised that it is an event they cannot miss.
Jon defeated Tiger in that 2018 Ryder at hole 17 of the French Golf National. He did it with an atomic birdie, after hitting a drive of about 350 yards because he was fired up from making a gross bogey on the 16th… Very typical of Jon. Today, on the 17th, the Spaniard has sunk a pure shot of more than ten metres to stay in the co-leadership. He also made a birdie there on Thursday. Things happen on the 17th when Jon is around, but tomorrow, fortunately or unfortunately, we will have to go all the way to the 18th to finish whatever needs to be finished.
– 29th of September 2018. There, still at the Golf National, after the Saturday afternoon foursomes in which Jon did not play, the Barrika player found out that he had been paired with Tiger for the singles the next day. Tommy Fleetwood, faced with the growing nervousness of his young teammate, spoke to him short and clear: “you are better than him, right now you are better than him”. Jon, who until then had played two points in that Ryder and had lost them, admitted some time later that those words from the Englishman were like a balm.
This Sunday, Rahm and Fleetwood go out together in the star match with the Olympic gold at stake. Neither of them, until this week, had set foot on the Golf National since that Ryder, almost six years ago. Surely Tommy still thinks the same, that Jon is the best, but tomorrow he won’t tell him before going out to play, that would be too much.
– Xander Schauffele, the third man in tomorrow’s star match, was not in that Ryder. He would make his debut in style in the next one, at Whistling Straits. In the 2018 Ryder, the American captain, Jim Furyk, had four choices to complete the twelve-man squad, and it’s very curious, because his first three choices went to the three players who had immediately missed out on the list of eight who qualified directly, namely, in this order, Bryson DeChambeau, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods… According to that rule of three, he could also have chosen Schauffele, who was next on the list, but Furyk preferred to take Tony Finau…
Surely Xander remembers all that well. And he is likely to consider the long wait worthwhile if he wins the Olympic gold tomorrow at the Golf National. Or maybe the gates of Versailles will remain somehow closed for the Californian. He is, of course, the favourite. You cannot consider otherwise the great dominator in the 2024 Majors.
Whatever Fleetwood said (and he had good reasons), Tiger was also the favourite that Sunday, September 30th at the Golf National… Ryder memories, GOLD reflections.
