Jon Rahm has admitted that he had one issue all week at Le Golf National as the Spaniard agonisingly missed out on winning a medal from the Olympic Games.
At one stage on the back nine in the final round, it appeared that Jon Rahm was on course to win the Olympic gold medal – and by some margin, too. The 29-year-old led by four shots at one point to put himself on the brink.
Of course, some would have expected a couple more twists before the final putt was hit. But few would have ever anticipated that Rahm would miss out on the podium altogether, with the LIV Golf star having to settle for a tie for fifth alongside Rory McIlroy.
Remarkably, Xander Schauffele was the only player in the top 15 to produce a worse final round than Rahm.
Jon Rahm discusses issue he had during Olympic golf event
You would have thought that Rahm would be able to pick out a few key moments which cost him, but it seems that he was particularly frustrated with his putting over the entire tournament.
“Yeah, I think a little bit. 11 and 12, to be honest, the more I think about it is just things that can happen in golf. It’s not like it was terrible. You know, it was a lot more wind than we can feel on 11, that’s why it went long played five long and ended up being 10 long. Hit a good putt but misread it,” he said.
“The three-putt situation has been an issue the whole week. I think I three-putted pretty much every day and this is not something I’m used to. I think I had three, four, five, six three-putts for the week and that’s way too many.
“The main mistake is the third shot on 14. Once I missed the fairway, which can happen because it’s a tough tee shot to hit, you know, put a lay up – it was a good lay up, I can’t do what I did on the third shot. Can’t go left. 8-iron, 162 metres, I believe. Trying to take long out of play and knowing that short right is fine. Yeah, can’t go left of that green, right, and ended up in a terrible lie. Ended up paying the price for compounding mistakes on that hole.”
A potential weakness in his amazing game
Of course, there is absolutely no chance that Rahm has not considered what would have happened had he simply made just two three-putts rather than six. That would have made up the four shots between himself and winner Scottie Scheffler.
Rahm is ninth on LIV this season when it comes to putting average, but he was 37th on the PGA Tour last year when it came to strokes gained with the flat stick. So, while he is by no means anything other than a brilliant putter, it is perhaps not at the level which makes the two-time major champion one of the best on the planet on the greens.
Obviously, Scheffler shows that you do not need to be an amazing putter to thrive. Scheffler spoke about struggling on the greens last week, too. But Rahm is clearly not at all happy with how he performed on what threatened to be a historic day for him.
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