No matter how many times Jon Rahm repeated the word “pain,” and there were many after losing not only the gold, but his chances at an Olympic golf medal, nothing summed up that pain better than his face, his terrified face sometimes broken voice, the silence of his speech when he tries to find words to explain what happened, the saddest eyes that can be remembered. Jon Rahm has the gold of the Paris Games “in his hands”, and he knows it, when there are eight holes left to play on the last day of Le Golf National he leads the table with four blows ahead of his pursuers. The Basque flew until that moment, leading without discussion after three excellent first laps (-4, -5 and -5) and a start to the final stage with the situation under control.
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Rahm is the one from his best times, the double major winner, the player who in those moments believed himself to be invincible. And suddenly… the collapse. On the 11th, a bogey after failing a putt too short, a misread fall, another skid at the next station, and the sinking, a double bogey on the par five 14th, a road stop where the normal thing is to discount a stroke instead of taking two. A bad third shot from the fairway took him out of the game, something short-circuited in his mind, and he chained two more bad shots to suffer a decline in concentration and aspirations. It’s still a long way, four holes, but something broke inside him, and that golfer who in the most complicated moments showed his strength, his mental strength, his ability to resist, just disappeared. BOTH bogeys In addition to the 17th and 18th, already lost and sunk, they sent him to fifth position with -15. The world number one, the American Scottie Scheffler, won in Paris, imperial with nine strokes under par on the day for the final -19; silver for Englishman Tommy Fleetwood and bronze for Japanese Hideki Matsuyama. With the -20 result that Rahm showed without the eight tragic holes, he would have won gold.
“It hurts,” he repeated. “With how well he played, there was no choice in the end… It’s hard to think about it now, I don’t know how to explain it. I was very lucky to represent Spain many times, including on this field, when we won a bronze medal in the European under-16 championship. After having the gold in my hands, not achieving anything, being left empty-handed, it was painful and disappointing,” analyzed Rahm, who put the chance in his free fall on the 14th hole. “Neither 11 nor 12. I failed putts short of the whole week, it was not my best week vegetables. The problem is the third shot on the 14th, there are things that can’t be done on this field. I took two hits. If I make a par there, even if it’s a par five, I have a choice, because 15 is cheap and 16 too, if I make those two. birds I put myself on top. I tried to fight till the end even if it was for money and it was not possible. It’s hard to digest and hard to explain. You learn from everything but trying to figure out what’s going on at every hole is painful. It cost me more than other times to overcome what happened,” he concluded. There was no trace of such a collapse in his career when he was fighting for a top.
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