Every major tournament has a cruel, petty power to humble golf’s stars. Rory McIlroy at the Masters. Justin Thomas at the PGA Championship. Phil Mickelson at the US Open (OK, make a lot of them).
This British Open seemed awfully vindictive, more brash and scornful of the sport’s power than most recent majors — until Jon Rahm staged the kind of stampede Saturday that propels a player into the record books and closer to contention.
The world’s third-ranked player stumbled to a three-over-par 74 on Thursday at Royal Liverpool Golf Club, good for all of 89th place. Friday’s 70 moved him 50 places forward. He arrived on the course a dozen shots off the lead of Brian Harman. But when Rahm finished his round Saturday with a birdie, just after Harman took a solitary, quiet walk to the first tee to start his, the gap between the men, one a two-time major winner, the other also in the running, was down to four.
Before night fell on England’s west coast, where downpours and wind were a frequent threat on Saturday, Harman pushed his margin over Rahm to six, propelling him towards lifting the newly engraved claret jug on Sunday night. Cameron Young is closest to Harman, five strokes back.
But Rahm’s Saturday 63 was, by two shots, a record for an Open at Royal Liverpool, which is hosting the tournament for the 13th time. It was also a strong response to two days of mostly ho-hum play by many of the world’s marquee golfers at the Open, where the leaderboard often felt like a glimpse into the depths of the game.
“I’ve given up shots at major championships that are very expensive, and that’s the main thing,” Rahm said Saturday. “That’s what I felt. I know I’m playing better, and I know my swing and my game is better than the scores I shoot.
Saturday was different, a feast for imaginative gunsmithing.
Often, Rahm said, the world sees best what they want to happen in this shot or that one. Often, he said, the truth comes in. But his Saturday, he suggested, was marked by the feeling of seeing “everything the way it should be.” On Saturday, he said at one point in Spanish, he “felt invincible.”
He made his debut birdie on the fifth hole, and added another on the ninth. Another came on the 10th, and it was around that time, he later recalled, that his shots began to hit the air. He got more birdies on the 11th and 12th holes, two more on Nos. 15 and 16 and the last on the 18th, mostly thunder.
Until Rahm’s surge on Saturday, disappointment was close to endemic among the sport’s top players, not because many stars won’t win but because they won’t even come close.
Saturday’s first five pairs — the players closest to missing the cut — included Scottie Scheffler (the current world No. 1), a five-time major champion (Brooks Koepka) and one of the game’s most enduringly popular figures (Rickie Fowler).
The final five pairs on Saturday? The players most clearly positioned to contend? Only Koepka has more major titles than the group as a whole, entering Saturday with an average world ranking of 59th, 40 spots below the mean for last summer’s third round in St. Louis. Andrews.
The top of the leaderboard is dotted with headliners, and headliners-in-waiting. Young, who finished second in last year’s Open, finished at seven under, one stroke ahead of Rahm. Jason Day, former world No. 1, Tommy Fleetwood and Viktor Hovland are among the players at five under. McIlroy, currently ranked second in the world, carded a 69 to move into three under.
But it’s been a strange week nonetheless, after a Friday cut knocked out a head-turning array of recent major champions, including Mickelson, Thomas, Dustin Johnson and Collin Morikawa. Other top players, including Scheffler, Koepka, Fowler and Patrick Cantlay, barely made it through the weekend.
“Maybe everybody just didn’t have their stuff this week,” said Cameron Smith, last year’s Open winner, who brought his score to one under Saturday when he shot a 68. “I’m not sure the answer to that. But those bunkers, I think if you’re trying to be aggressive — and generally major winners are aggressive players — it can bite you in the bum.
All many players can do is look to get through on Sunday.
“Win?” said Scheffler, who would be 16 strokes out of the lead at the end of the third round.
“A storm and then some I guess is what it’s going to take for me,” he added in one of the few major Saturdays where he was finished before the leaders stepped off the first tee. “I’m just going to go out tomorrow and do my best and get on the leaderboard and try and have a good day.”
Robert MacIntyre, the runner-up at last weekend’s Scottish Open, also resigned. By Saturday afternoon, his mind was already wandering in the hours after the tournament.
“Know that you have 18 holes before you put your feet up,” he said.
Rahm, resurrected, is in a different place.
“I’ve done what I needed to,” he said, “to give myself a chance.”