AUGUSTA — Jon Rahm had just left the 18th green when the singing started.
The sun was dipping low in the sky and the shadows were getting long, but the newly-minted Masters champion was lingering on the green, about to make his way through a corridor of patrons on his way to scoring. He embraced his wife, Kelley, then lifted his son, Kepa, onto his hip, still soaking everything in. Jose Maria Olazabal, his friend and mentor, embraced him. Each man was trying to hold back tears.
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Somewhere deep in the crowd, a small group of Europeans began to serenade him. A few seconds later, it felt like everyone at Augusta was joining them.
“Olé, Olé, Olé! Olé! Olé!”
It’s hard to pin down the disparate motivations of the people who make up a large crowd. Some, certainly, were applauding Rahm’s historic performance. Others, most likely, felt a connection to a man who has never been shy about sharing his emotions. There were also those who weren’t shy about the fact that they’d been pulling for Rahm all day simply because he was not Brooks Koepka, not a member of LIV Golf. But in the end, the reasons for their support didn’t matter, only the outcome. As Rahm made his way toward the clubhouse, the singing intensified.
“Olé, Olé, Olé! Olé! Olé!”
The 28-year-old kept looking up at the sky and smiling. He was thinking about a lot of things, about the dreams he had as a little boy of winning the Masters, but also about Seve Ballesteros and the other Spanish golfers who forged a path for him to get to this moment. It was Ballesteros’ birthday
“I never thought I was going to cry by winning a golf tournament, but I got very close on that 18th hole,” Rahm said. “This one was for Seve. He was up there helping, and I know he did.”
It was easy at the beginning of the week to view the 2023 Masters as a referendum on the viability of whether or not LIV Golf’s credibility was growing or fading. Players were asked about it repeatedly during the pre-tournament build-up. Augusta National subtly let its distaste be known by sidelining LIV Golfers from early-week press conferences, with the exception of Cam Smith, the reigning Open champion. Greg Norman, the commissioner of LIV, countered by complaining he hadn’t been invited to the Masters, then suggested that if a LIV member were to win the tournament, all 18 LIV players in attendance might storm the green in celebration.
It felt like the Masters had been pulled, unwillingly, into the messy debate, one that will likely rage for years to come. But by the time the actual golf started, the LIV discussion seemed less important than the history at stake. That’s the power of the Masters. Tiger Woods mentioned on Tuesday that the joy he feels when he’s on property now is different from what he felt back in 1997, but fulfilling in different ways. He gets to spend time with his son and his friends, sharing old memories. He seemed almost wistful as he said it. “So much of my life has been here at Augusta National,” Woods said. “I don’t know how many of these I have left. So I just want to be able to appreciate the time that I have here and cherish the memories.”
Even Phil Mickelson, the man at the center of the fracture, felt the aura of Augusta when he showed up, a year after missing the tournament for the first time in 2022.
“If you love golf, when you come here, it's more of a spiritual experience, where you feel this appreciation for this great game and the gratitude that you have,” Mickelson said. “I thought it was exciting that this tournament rose above it all to have the best players in the world here and lost all the pettiness; that was great.”
There was also no shortage of storylines outside squabbles between the PGA Tour and LIV. The new tee on the 13th hole had a turn in the spotlight. That inevitably spurred talk that if Augusta has to spend upwards of $30 million to maintain the design integrity of its most iconic hole, there are changes coming to the sport, likely in the name of bifurcation.
“Generally we have always been supportive of the governing bodies,” said Masters chairman Fred Ridley. “I've stated that we believe distance needs to be addressed. I think the natural conclusion is, yes, we will be supportive.”
Rory McIlroy endured yet another exhausting build-up to the Masters, endless questions about whether he could finally capture the career grand slam, only to get bounced from the tournament after two rounds for the second time in three years. (63-year-old Fred Couples bested him by four shots in becoming the oldest player ever to make the cut.) Scottie Scheffler seemed poised to defend his title, the first man to do so since Woods in 2000 and 2001, but his putting abandoned him early in the week, and he never climbed into contention despite leading the field with 76 percent of his greens hit. His most memorable moment came when cameras caught him having an animated, seemingly heated exchange with his putting coach on the practice green on Wednesday.
By the time the weekend arrived, the Masters felt like a two-man race. Despite four-putting the first hole of the tournament, Rahm opened 65-69, a score bested only by Koepka, who opened 65-67.
“If you're going to make a double or four-putt or anything, it might as well be the first hole, 71 holes to make it up,” Rahm said. After the tournament, he couldn’t resist giving his friend Zach Ertz, a tight end for the Arizona Cardinals, considerable grief. Ertz had texted Rahm Thursday morning, ten minutes before his tee time, mentioning that the first hole looked like a “walk in the park.”
“Thank you Zach,” Rahm said. “Don’t ever do that again, please.”
As patient as Rahm was, a rejuvenated and motivated Koepka entered the final round with a two-shot lead and a chance to win his fifth major, something that no one saw coming 18 months ago when he seemed adrift and lost, unable to swing with the kind of freedom that helped him rise to become the No. 1 player in the world. One of the reasons he said he agreed to participate in Netflix’s documentary, Full Swing, is because he wanted people to see another side of him. He felt vulnerable and broken, but as his health returned, so did his internal fire. He’d chosen LIV in part because his career felt in jeopardy and while he remained happy with that decision, he did miss aspects of his old life.
“Competitively you miss playing against them, right?” Koepka said. “Because you want Rory to play his best and Scottie to play his best and Jon to play his best and go toe-to-toe with them. I do miss that, and that's one thing that I do miss, and that's what I think makes these majors so cool.”
For two and half days, Koepka hit the kind of towering, breathtaking drives that reminded you of the man he used to be. His irons were surgical, his putting was artful.
“I've known this for a while, but I guess it was just a matter of going out and doing it,” Koepka said.
Rahm, fighting through the worst of the weather, could barely stay within striking distance. When play was called on Saturday due to a deluge of rain, Koepka had stretched his lead to four shots. Rahm sensed he needed to increase the pressure, lest they start fitting Koepka for a green jacket on Saturday night.
“I wasn't expecting Brooks to play bad,” Rahm said. “I can't expect that, right? So I need to bring the fight to him.”
Slowly Rahm began to chip away. He cut the lead to two by the end of the third round but was furious with himself that it wasn’t closer. A bad 3-putt bogey on 13, a three-putt par on 15 and a lazy iron into 16 that led to another bogey had him seething.
“That's the only time I ever felt like, you know, I was truly upset at something,” Rahm said.
But Rahm’s caddie, Adam Hayes, made him promise something before they tee off in the final round. No half measures for the rest of the day.
“I told him I needed 100 percent commitment on every shot,” Hayes said. “I know when he does that, he’s really hard to beat.”
It would be (somewhat) unfair to suggest that Koepka suffered a Norman-esque collapse on Sunday. But he continued his troubling pattern of looking shaky when trying to close out a major, one that now has scar tissue earned from Harding Park, Pebble Beach, Portrush and Kiawah. His opening tee shot in the final round felt like an indicator that it was not going to be
Source: https://nolayingup.com/blog/jon-rahm-s-inevitability