Everything went so wrong it seems unbelievable. Jon Rahm finished the first day of the Masters breaking personal negative records: he had the worst round of the 37 times he has played Augusta National (78 strokes), the highest score in the first 9 (40), he only took 50 percent of greens, a pyrrhic figure and he did not make a single birdie in 18 holes. “There are no excuses. The luck is that I haven’t scored 80 shots, and after the second shot on the 17th hole I came to think about it.”
The Barrika golfer, the 2023 champion, was slapped by a very difficult course, I had never seen a Thursday like this. “Maybe some Sunday or Saturday, maybe we’ve seen greens that hard,” said Groggy, lamenting that the entire game had been bad. “I didn’t leave them close or kick well. It was a bad day in general,” he acknowledged. “And it bothers me because until today I was playing very well this season. It was totally unexpected.”
Even his best shot of the day, after a superb wood on the 13th starting hole, came a cataclysm. He played an 8 iron, an easy shot to have even made an eagle chance, and he got lost in the bushes. He ended up with a double bogey, which aggravated the four bogeys he had already accumulated. “There have been a lot of mistakes. I estimate that I will have to make two or three under par tomorrow to make the cut.”
With integrity he spoke of visiting the physiotherapist “and going to dinner. And starting something positive. Tomorrow will be another day. With that shot from 13 he could have changed the result three strokes. “Having to make a titanic effort the next three days to have any chance of winning is frustrating.”