Now, here’s a quote that will resonate with golfers across the land. “I just couldn’t find a fairway off the tee,” grumbled Jon Rahm with a sighing summing up of affairs that was probably echoed by a brassed-off Norrie or Archie in the clubhouse bar after yet another crushingly futile outing at the Pumpherston Saturday medal. Golf is a great leveller, eh?
In the grand, chaotic scene of this 106th US PGA Championship at Valhalla, which saw the world No 1, Scottie Scheffler, arrested before round two on Friday, Rahm’s early exit from the second men’s major of the year was a mere footnote.
The Spaniard, the Masters champion just over a year ago, was an also ran. Again. His defence of golf’s green jacket in April ended in a humdrum 45th place finish. This was worse.
While the aforementioned Scheffler and others were all embroiled in a tussle for supremacy at the sharp end as the third round got underway after a fog delay, Rahm was, like a Kentucky bluegrass song, a long time gone.
The cut was actually made on Saturday morning, with various players having to return to complete the remaining holes of their second circuits, and it fell at one-under.
A record 78 players were in red figures after two rounds of a major championship, eclipsing the previous mark of 71 in the 2006 Open at Royal Liverpool. Rahm missed it by one.
This premature departure ended Rahm's run of 18 major cuts made and it provided further fuel to those who believe his defection to the breakaway LIV Golf series ain’t be good for his competitive zeal.
Rahm won’t have any of that, of course, but failing to make any sort of impact in the first two majors of the year will have cut him to quick. As for missing this particular cut?
“Surprised,” said Rahm. “Surprised because of how I felt like I was hitting it in Australia and Singapore (on the LIV series) and in the week off before coming here. Especially off the tee, I was hitting great drives, and that’s what’s been my downfall.”
In the build up to the Valhalla showpiece, Rahm had talked about his lingering fondness for the PGA Tour, a circuit he basically split up from after being lured by the fluttering LIV lashes and a reported $500 million pay day. Breaking up is hard to do, in a fashion.
“You guys keep saying ‘the other side," Rahm said in his pre-tournament press conference as he addressed the ‘us and them’ nature of the divide in men’s golf. “But I’m still a PGA Tour member, whether suspended or not. I still want to support the PGA Tour, and I think that’s an important distinction to make.”
For the man and woman on the street, of course, all the money-soaked this, that and the other that’s consumed the professional scene has become an almighty turn off.
The resignation earlier in the week of Jimmy Dunne, an influential figure in the on-going peace talks among the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund which bankrolls LIV, was another wearying episode in a prolonged palaver. On and on we go.
For auld hand Padraig Harrington, who played a practice round with Rahm at Valhalla earlier in the week, the general situation remains something of a scunner.
“My own personal opinion is I’m kind of frustrated because at times I thought I knew what the situation was [in talks between golf’s rival factions], but it’s changed so much, every day it seems to change,” said the veteran Irishman, who won the US PGA Championship back in his glorious summer of 2008. He probably summed up the feelings of casual observers too.
“It’s hard to get a handle on it,” added Harrington. “I honestly think at this stage you kind of need an independent adjudicator to come in and tell everybody what’s what.
“It doesn’t seem to be good for golf to fracture, the PGA Tour is missing some of the guys who we didn’t think we’d miss and somebody needs to come in and tell us what to do.
“We need a mediator to sort it out. We would all like solid clarity and leave it at that.”
As day three of the championship finally got underway, the PGA of America’s flagship event had plenty to stir the senses. The likes of Shane Lowry, Justin Rose and Rory McIlroy were all hunting down halfway leader Xander Schauffele with purposeful front-nine surges.
Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre was making a fine fist of it too as he recovered from two early bogeys with a brace of birdies towards the turn.
Scheffler, meanwhile, started with a card that could’ve earned another ticking off from the Lousville Metro Police Department as he leaked four shots on his first four holes.
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