Out of Rai’s unlikely win came the usual avalanche of anecdotes and highlights, but perhaps none more awwww-inspiring than this fan video which, through sheer luck, captured Rai’s wife’s reaction to her husband’s 68-foot bomb on the 17th hole.
At tournaments of this magnitude, the temptation is to project, to extrapolate, to chart the arc of what comes next. At 31, Rai has time on his side, a long runway ahead. But what makes his story worth sitting with isn’t that he’s here, but the route he took.
For months, questions had swirled around whether Smith would ever return to being a genuine factor in the majors again. At Aronimink, he provided an encouraging answer.
Like a Melbourne Cup field bunching up at the final bend at Flemington in November, 30 players will start the final round at Aronimink Golf Club within five strokes of the lead, 29 of those separated by just three strokes.
Nothing about this course has been predictable except its unpredictability, and the morning’s rogue wave giving way to afternoon carnage has set the stage for a heady brew of final-round chaos.
What changed? Was it inevitable that his irons would click into gear, and that the narrative of him making some drastic, disastrous change to tank the sunset of Rose’s career was overblown?
Australian Golf Digest
