However many times Jon Rahm repeated the word “painful”, and it was many after dramatically losing not only the gold but also his chances of a medal in Olympic golf, nothing could better sum up that pain than his face, his haggard face, his sometimes cracked voice, the silences in his speech when he tried to find words to explain what had happened, the saddest eyes anyone can remember. Jon Rahm had the gold of the Paris Games “in his hands”, and he acknowledged it, when with eight holes to play on the last day at Le Golf National he led the leaderboard with a four-stroke advantage over his pursuers. The Basque had flown up to that point, the undisputed leader after three very good first rounds (-4, -5 and -5) and a start to the final round with the situation under control.
Rahm was the player of his prime, the two-time Grand Slam winner, the player who at that moment believes himself invincible. And suddenly… the collapse. In the 11th minute, a bogeyafter failing a puttvery short, a misread fall, another skid at the next station, and the collapse, a double bogeyOn the par five 14th, a stop along the way where it was normal 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 that drop in concentration and in his aspirations. There was still a long way to go, four holes, but something had broken inside him, and that golfer who in the most complex moments showed his grit, his mental strength, his ability to resist, simply disappeared. Two bogeysBut on the 17th and 18th, already defeated and sunk, he was sent 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 the Englishman Tommy Fleetwood and bronze for the Japanese Hideki Matsuyama. With the score of -20 that Rahm had with those eight tragic holes to go, he would have won gold.
“It hurts,” he repeated. “After playing so well, not having a chance at the end… It’s hard to think about it now, I don’t know how to explain it. I’ve been lucky enough to represent Spain many times, including on this course, when we won a bronze medal at the European Under-16 Championship. After having the gold in my hands, not achieving anything, leaving empty-handed, is painful and disappointing,” analysed Rahm, who placed the moment of his free fall on that 14th hole. “Neither the 11th nor the 12th. I failed.” puttsshorts all week, it hasn’t been my best week in the greens. The problem was the third shot on the 14th, there are things that cannot be done on this course. It cost me two shots. If I make par there, even if it is a par five, I have a chance, because the 15th was affordable and the 16th too, if I made those two shots. birdies“I was on top. I tried to fight until the end, even if it was for a silver medal, but it wasn’t to be. It’s hard to digest and difficult to explain. You learn from everything, but making the effort to think about what happened on each hole is going to hurt a lot. It’s going to cost me a lot more than in other times to overcome what happened,” he concluded. There is no trace of a similar collapse in his career when he was fighting for a summit.
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