‘Advantages of professional golf’: Jon Rahm gets wild break, thanks to rules

Jon Rahm was talking breaks, good and bad ones. Earlier Friday, he had gotten a great one at the Genesis Invitational, when his second shot on the par-5 17th ricocheted off the base of the grandstands behind the green, bounced forward and settled 3 feet from the cup, and now Rahm was being reflective. 

“There’s almost a little hint of embarrassment because come on, that is very, very lucky, but I feel like, as golfers, we get plenty of bad breaks in our lifetime,” Rahm said. 

“To get one of those, we should cherish it because I won’t see something like this in a long time.”

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Then came Saturday. 

When, during the third round, and tied for the lead, Rahm overcooked one again. His tee shot on the par-4 3rd at Riviera flew a fence and likely ended up in what appeared to be a parking lot. 

Only he didn’t play among the Genesises. He didn’t even have to look for it. Rahm hit stroke two from a good lie. A break? You bet. 

“One of the advantages of professional golf,” analyst Frank Nobilo said on the Golf Channel broadcast. 

Indeed. Let’s start from the tee. There, Rahm hit, his right hand released his club on the follow-through, and he pointed left. That’s a hook. He yelled fore. His ball cleared the black-mesh fence and disappeared, at least on the Golf Channel broadcast. 

“This is problematic,” analyst Arron Oberholser said on the broadcast.   

Until the ball cleared the fence, which was a temporary immovable obstruction, and relief is relatively simple there: complete relief and a club length. But Rahm didn’t have to look for it? Nope. It’s covered under Model Local Rule F-23 of the Rules of Golf, which states: “If the player’s ball has not been found but is known or virtually certain to have come to rest in a TIO: The player may take relief under this Local Rule by using the estimated point where the ball last crossed the edge of the TIO on the course as the spot of the ball for purposes of finding the nearest point of complete relief.”

So Rahm dropped to the right of the fence. He was now in the rough, about 130 yards away. 

“That might be a lost ball for a poor old member out here,” Oberholser said on the broadcast, his thought being that the fence is likely not usually there. 

“He’s had a few good breaks this week,” Nobilo said.  

Of course, the sequence has happened occasionally. Notably, during the 2021 Tour Championship, Bryson DeChambeau hit one right and over a TIO fence, only to also get a penalty-free drop. Both, of course, are breaks. 

On Rahm’s, he hit his second shot to the left of the green, and he two-putted for par. 

“Got away with it,” announcer Terry Gannon said on the broadcast.  

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