Jon Rahm shares the lead. And he’s in that position after a three-hop opening and the last hole.
But, he said, it was what fell right before it all that impressed him the most. And he was confused Bryson DeChambeau.
“Well, it was shocking, obviously,” he said.
The sequence came on Saturday during the third round of LIV Golf’s Adelaide event, after Rahm went left with his tee shot on Grange Golf Club’s 18th hole, and over the tee box on the adjacent 10th hole. He screamed. He covered his head. He yelled again. Rahm came to the hole two back of leader DeChambeau, who was also in his group, and he was on the 18th fairway for his second shot.
A place Rahm almost ended up in.
Doing so required breaking the rules—and his memory. On Friday, Rahm also went left on the 18th and around the 10th, but his return shot to the green was blocked by a fence deemed a temporary immovable barrier, which, thanks to the rulesgave him a point without it. This put him a few feet to the left of the fairway, and, from there, he took off and birdied.
On Saturday, it all happened again, only with extra theatrics.
Rahm walked to his ball, spoke to a regulation official, then picked up the ball and again went to a spot just to the left of the fairway. A few feet ahead of him, DeChambeau was shown by an FS1 camera saying a one-word question — “What?” – before rolling his eyes. Rahm had about 40 yards left on DeChambeau, and now he was almost directly behind him.
“I didn’t know that was what could happen, so that was the biggest part of the shock,” DeChambeau said after the round. “It was like, what the hell, you can do that? I didn’t know that. But at the end of the day, I didn’t really know from my perspective that it was good there, so I was kind of shocked.
“That’s really all it was, at the end of the day. I didn’t think much of it other than that. … But no, I didn’t know it was there, and hopefully that can work in my favor at some point. I’ve had a lot worse shots, by the way, too. It was just a shock at the moment, and then I did, you know what, I did even worse than I did.”
As mentioned in the first paragraph of this report, there was more.
After his fall, Rahm opened for an eagle two. And after a DeChambeau draw, they will enter Sunday’s final round tied for the lead.
“Well, I’d say that might be the most impressive thing I’ve done all week,” Rahm said, “which is pull it left twice, hit the fairway twice and finish on the 10th tee twice. The odds of that are very low.
“Then luckily we get the TIO relief, obviously, I knew that yesterday so I wasn’t too worried, and knowing where I was going to throw, a pretty good angle with that pin, too. It was actually the best place to be for almost any pin for that distance.
“It was a really good number, 62 feet in the wind, trying to get it down about six, seven. Obviously he executed it pretty well, and the rest is what you all saw. I really don’t expect to get it. I hope to hit it close, but I definitely ended up with the big prize on that one.”
“>
