Ten years ago, Jon Rahm was certain that he would one day triumph at the Masters – thanks to a Chinese fortune cookie.
“Your talents will be recognized and appropriately rewarded,” said the small piece of paper in 2013. “I’m going to win the Masters!” Rahm tweeted at the time, complete with photo evidence and full of self-confidence. Now the prediction has come true. At the end of a very long Sunday with 30 holes played, the 28-year-old Spaniard in the legendary green winner’s jacket stood in a flurry of camera cameras at the Augusta National Golf Club and smiled happily.
“We all dream of things like this as players. And you try to imagine how it will be and how it will feel,” said Rahm after the second major win of his career. “I never thought I would cry because I won a golf tournament. But I was very close to the 18th hole.”
Rahm finished the Masters with a total of 276 strokes and relegated the two US professionals Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka, who play for the much criticized LIV tour financed by Saudi Arabia, to shared second place with a four-stroke lead. Victory at the Masters also made Rahm number one in the golf world again. It was his fourth tournament success this year. There was also 3.24 million US dollars in prize money for the win.
When Rahm set out to complete his third lap after days of rain, storms and fallen trees, he was four strokes behind the leader Koepka. Three-time Masters champion Mickelson was even ten strokes behind. Mickelson, now 52, hit 65 strokes, the best final round of any competitor – and the best by a 50+ golfer in tournament history. Koepka, on the other hand, made too many mistakes and ended the final round with 75 strokes.
The 87th edition of the Masters was hard work for Rahm and especially for superstar Tiger Woods. Before the start of the final round, the pros had to finish the third round on Sunday due to the weather chaos of the previous few days and were therefore out on the pitch much longer than usual.
Woods has to pay tribute to hardships
For 47-year-old Woods, who is still suffering from the consequences of his car accident in February 2021, the hardships were too great: the 15-time major champion was unable to continue the tournament after playing seven holes of the third round and had to withdraw from the Masters ended prematurely due to injury. The reason for this is an inflammation of the tendon plate on the underside of the foot. “I’m disappointed to have to retire this morning due to a recurrence of my plantar fasciitis,” Woods tweeted.
The long-time number one in the world had previously made the cut in Augusta for the 23rd time in a row, setting a record. So far only South Africa’s golf legend Gary Player and Fred Couples from the USA had achieved this record.
And it was precisely this 63-year-old Fred Couples who took the record for the oldest player to make the cut at the Masters from Germany’s golf legend Bernhard Langer in Augusta. Couples was three and a half months older than Langer, who last survived the cut in 2020. An incentive for the now 65-year-old from Anhausen to take back the record from the US veteran next year. It would then be Langer’s 41st Masters start.
This year’s Masters saw PGA Tour and DP World Tour players meet their former peers who are now making their money in the multi-million dollar LIV series. The tensions feared in the run-up to the tournament did not materialise. The golf fans in Augusta also cheered the strong performance of the LIV professionals. The big party provocatively announced by LIV boss Greg Norman in the event of a win by one of his players on the 18th green of the Augusta National Golf Club was canceled after Rahm’s Masters triumph.
