Jon Rahm (PAR) has handed in a card of 72 strokes on the second day of the PGA Championship and his cut is in the air. He has a long afternoon of tense waiting ahead to find out if the sieve in Valhalla is set at par and, therefore, he earns a place for the weekend, or if it is set at -1 and he is forced to pack his bags. 70 and tied pass.
At the time of handing in the card, par was within the cut by a whisker, but the matter looks bad unless the weather conditions get complicated as the minutes go by. Just as he finished his round, it stopped raining and the course was ready to be attacked. The only aspect in his favour is that a certain wind was beginning to rise and the forecast points to a possible storm from five o’clock in the afternoon local time. If conditions worsen, Jon’s chances of seeing the weekend will increase.
Be that as it may, Rahm will need the help of Mother Nature after a bad day of golf. Without palliatives. He has rarely been in a situation, he has complicated his life a lot from the tee and he has not been fine with the shots to green either. In reality, if he has stayed in the tournament and with some hope of making the cut, it has been because of the putt. It is the only club that has supported him today. It has been night and day compared to the version we were all able to see on Wednesday.
We could say that Jon’s cut is in danger because he has not hit a shot to the right. We use this very Spanish expression literally because all his mistakes have been to the left. All is all. Today, between drives and shots to green, he has missed up to twelve shots on that same side. Twelve are many, too many, and we have to add them to the nine he missed on Thursday. In total, 21 shots missed on the same side. It’s a trend. His natural shot is to the left and opening, but this week either he didn’t open the ball or not as much as he needed. It is true that Valhalla is a course that is allowing a high number of birdies, but it is no less true that from the rough it gets very complicated…
And Jon has spent too much time in the rough, on the left of course. Today on holes 12 and 17, for example, he couldn’t even play forward. He had to take it out to the street horizontally on 12 and backwards on 17, as the ball had gotten very close to a trunk and he didn’t have a swing forward. “I don’t think I’ve missed a shot to the right all week. All the mistakes have been to the left. I don’t really know what happened. I don’t know if I was aiming wrong, which is not usual for me, or that I was aiming too much and then not turning my body well. I was very surprised by how well I was playing. It’s the first time this has happened to me, that I’ve been playing very well and things don’t work out in a tournament,” he explains.
Jon’s second Major in 2024 and second bad week. It’s been a while since a sequence like this happened, specifically since the Masters and the PGA in 2022, when he chained a 27th and a 48th place. This time it could be worse if it is finally confirmed that he does not make the cut. All that remains is to cross your fingers…
