Jon Rahm shares the lead. And he finds himself in that position after a three-hop holeout on the final hole.
But, he said, it was what happened immediately before that made the biggest impression on him. And it confused Bryson DeChambeau.
“Well, it was obviously shocking,” he said.
The sequence came during the third round of LIV Golf’s Adelaide event on Saturday, after Rahm took his tee shot to the left on the 18th hole at Grange Golf Club and to the tee box on the adjacent 10th hole. He shouted. He covered his head. He shouted again. Rahm came to the two hole behind leader DeChambeau, who was also in his group, and he found himself on the 18th fairway for his second shot.
A place where Rahm almost ended up.
This required a violation of the rules – and his memory. On Friday, Rahm also went left on 18 and around the 10th tee box, but the shot back to the green was blocked by a fence that was deemed a temporary immovable obstruction, which, thanks to the rulesgave him a drop of it free. That put him a few yards left of the fairway, and from there he threw further and made birdie.
On Saturday it all happened again, only with extra theater.
Rahm went to his ball, spoke to a rules official, then picked up his ball and again went to a spot just left of the fairway. Just feet in front of him, DeChambeau was shown by an FS1 camera uttering a one-word question: “What?” – before rolling his eyes. Rahm was about 40 yards away from DeChambeau, and now he was almost directly behind him.
“I didn’t know this could happen, so that was the biggest part of the shock,” DeChambeau said after the round. “It was like, what the hell can you do that? I didn’t know that. But at the end of the day, from my perspective, I didn’t really know that it was OK there, so I was a little bit shocked.”
“That’s all it was in the end. I didn’t think much about it beyond that. But no, I didn’t know that was there, and hopefully at some point that can work out in my favor. I’ve had a lot worse shots, by the way. It was just a bit of a shock at the time, and then I thought, you know what, I’ve done a lot worse than that too.”
As mentioned in the first paragraph of this report, there was more.
After his drop, Rahm holed out for an eagle two. And after a DeChambeau par, they enter the final round with a shared lead on Sunday.
“Well, I’d say this might be the most impressive thing I’ve done all week,” Rahm said, “and that is: pull twice as far to the left, go on the cart path twice, and end up on the 10th tee twice. The chances of that are pretty slim.
“Then luckily we get the TIO relief, obviously I knew that from yesterday so I wasn’t too worried, and because I knew where I was going to fall I also had a pretty good angle to that pin. It was actually the best place to be pretty much in front of every single pin for that distance.
“It was a really good track, 62 meters into the wind, and I tried to land it about six or seven short. Obviously it worked out pretty well, and the rest is what you all saw. I don’t really expect to make it. I hope I can get close, but in the end I ended up winning the grand prize.”
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