AUGUSTA, Ga. – Two-time champion Jose Maria Olazabal missed the cut at the 87th Masters, but he donned his Green Jacket and waited behind the 18th green in the gloaming of a brisk but sunny Sunday at Augusta National Golf Club to welcome his fellow Spaniard Jon Rahm to the club.
“He said he hopes it’s the first of many more. We both mentioned something about Seve, and if he had given us 10 more seconds, I think we would have both ended up crying,” Rahm said.
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Rahm became the fourth Spaniard to win the Masters, joining Sergio Garcia (2017), Olazabal (1994, 1999) and Seve Ballesteros who died in 2011 and 40 years ago birdied the first four holes to win the title for the second time (the first being in 1980.) On what would’ve been Seve’s 66th birthday, Rahm had to play 30 holes, rallying from four strokes back at the start of the day and two behind with 18 holes to go to shoot 3-under 69 and beat Brooks Koepka and Phil Mickelson by four strokes.
Rahm, 28, grew up in Barrika, Spain a town of about 1,500 in the Basque country of northern Spain. As he developed his distinctive swing under the eye of Spanish golf coach Eduardo Celles, Rahm won tournaments with his aggressive and creative play, drawing comparisons to Ballesteros. He never witnessed the Spanish great play, but he met him once.
“I was too young to appreciate who I was shaking hands with,” he said of Ballesteros. “Obviously I grew up on Tiger (Woods) and Phil (Mickelson), respecting and admiring both players for what they’ve done. But my idol, it’s always been Seve. I try to emulate what he inspired on the golf course.”
On Tuesday, Rahm first learned during a media shoot that Seve’s birthday would coincide with the final round, and he discussed the topic while playing a practice round with Olazabal and Garcia.
“I was told a lot of things about why this could be the year, and I just didn’t want to buy into it too much,” he said.
On Thursday, Augusta National’s greens were receptive and scoring was low. Rahm spotted the field two strokes, opening with a 4-putt double bogey. Just 10 minutes before he teed off, his friend Zach Ertz, who plays tight end in the NFL and has won a Super Bowl, texted Rahm that the first green would be a walk in the park.
“Thank you, Zach,” Rahm said during his winner’s ceremony. “Don’t ever do that again.”
A younger version of Rahm may have self-combusted in anger and proceeded to shoot himself out of the tournament but this version of Rahm proved more resilient and as walked to the second tee, a famous quote jumped to mind from the time when Ballesteros was asked to explain his four-putt at the Masters.
“I just kept thinking to myself, ‘Well, I miss, I miss, I miss, I make.’ Move on to the next,” Rahm said. “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 rebounded with seven birdies and an eagle and posted 7-under 65 to share the first-round lead with Koepka and Viktor Hovland. Despite getting the wrong side of the draw, he followed it up with 69 as the weather worsened to improve to 10-under 134 and trailed Koepka by two strokes. It marked the first time at the Masters that two players reached double figures through 36 holes and set up a riveting weekend with two prizefighters ready to do battle.
In one corner, representing LIV Golf — bought and paid for to the tune of a reported $100 million, a figure he couldn’t say no to even though he had bad-mouthed the Saudi-funded league for months — was Koepka. The four-time major winner had a chip on his shoulder to prove that his myriad of injuries and defection to LIV didn’t mean he was washed up at 32. He was trying to join an exclusive group of only 20 men that had won five or more majors in their careers.
In the other corner, Rahm representing the PGA Tour, the FedEx Cup points leader who declared he cared about legacy and chasing down the records of Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus. He had one major to his credit, the first Spanish player to win the U.S. Open in 2021, but whether the Official World Golf Ranking said so or not he was convinced he was the best player in the world – and had been playing like it. The Masters marked the sixth time this season on the Tour that Rahm had entered the final round in first or second on the leaderboard, the most of any player.
The LIV-PGA Tour subplot could not be ignored and speaking at last week’s LIV event in Orlando, Graeme McDowell, who joined the upstart league last year, summed up what was at stake.
“It would be a watershed moment,” he said, if a LIV player were to win the Masters. “I think it will be hugely important. It will legitimize what we’re doing.”
Against that backdrop, the first of what turned out to be a two-round duel between a pair of broad-shouldered bombers was played in bone-chilling cold, wet, windy conditions on Saturday. Koepka slept on a four-stroke lead after play was suspended due to inclement weather, and carried a two-stroke edge after both shot 73s in the third round. Majors still are 72-hole affairs and unfortunately for Koepka, his final 18 resembled that of LIV Golf’s fearless leader Greg Norman when he was trying to close out many a major.
Koepka’s lead had vanished by the fourth hole, he didn’t make a birdie until 13 and looked out of sorts, fighting a double cross off the tee and a suddenly balky putter. He shot 3-over 75.
Rahm applied early pressure with a birdie at 3, scrambled for par at six and when he holed the putt the patrons exploded with delight as he took sole possession of the lead.
“I think most of the time in America Jon is rooted for less. That’s not a bad thing and I get it,” Rahm’s caddie, Adam Hayes said. “Today, I felt like Jon had a few more people out there rooting for him. Is that good or bad, I don’t know and I don’t know why.”
Rahm pitched perfectly to tap-in range at eight, a hole he played in 5-under for the week, to build a two-stroke advantage. He gave a stroke back with a bogey at nine, his lone dropped stroke of the day, but made a surgical dissection of the lengthened 13th for yet another birdie. Then he effectively put the tournament on ice with a remarkable birdie at 14, cutting an 8-iron approach from 142 yards in the first cut around a lone pine tree to within 5 feet of the hole.
“That was a wind the Spaniard up and let him go shot,” Hayes said. “I gave him the number and he just got in there and saw it.”
There was one last dicey moment at 18 when Rahm’s tee shot sailed left and he hit a provisional but found his ball and ripped a 4-iron inside 100 yards.
“I said, ‘C’mon, let’s get this thing up and down. Be a real champion. You don’t want to bogey the last hole,” Hayes recounted. “He said, ‘You read my mind.’ ”
Rahm did just that, making a ‘Seve par,’ and signing for a 72-hole total of 12-under 276. With the victory, Rahm will reclaim the top spot of the OWGR for the fifth time in his career. Mickelson birdied three of the final four holes to shoot 65, tying his lowest round in 114 trips around Augusta National. His previous low 65 dated to the opening round in 1996, and in doing so he became the oldest top-5 finisher in Masters history, surpassing Jimmy Demaret in 1952, and tied for second with Koepka.
“Didn’t feel like I did too much wrong, but that’s how golf goes sometimes,” Koepka said.
Rahm won for the fourth time on Tour this season, tying Garcia for most Tour wins by a Spanish-born player and he becomes the third player from Spain with multiple major titles, joining Ballesteros (5) and Olazábal (2). Watching from his home in Austin, Texas, Garcia, who missed the cut this year, was ecstatic his good friend won the Green Jacket.
“Super proud of him,” Garcia said. “It’s an honor for both of us to have won our Green Jackets on what would have been Seve’s birthday. We both idolized him growing up and we looked at him as the player we wanted to be.
“To me, at the moment, he’s the best player in the world. He’s so consistent and so good and he keeps getting better and better.”
Before 2022 champion Scottie Scheffler helped Rahm slip into his Green Jacket in the Butler Cabin, Rahm highlighted the importance of the 1997 Ryder Cup being played at Valderrama in Spain, which his parents attended and sparked their love of the game, and praised Seve’s role in shaping his future as a golfer.
“If it wasn’t for that Ryder Cup in ’97, my dad and I talk about it all the time, we don’t know where I would be or where as a family we would be,” Rahm said.
There he was in a Green Jacket, something he had dreamed of from a young age and standing at a podium on the Augusta National practice putting green and delivering one more eloquent speech at the outdoor Green Jacket public ceremony for the champion. When he had finished thanking everyone from the superintendent and staff to his caddie and family, Rahm had only these words left to conclude a wild and chaotic week at the 87th Masters:
“Happy Easter and rest in peace, Seve.” And then he made the symbol of the cross.
With reporting from Steve DiMeglio.
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