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.
Players from Rory McIlroy to Xander Schauffele praised their peer for both being a gentleman and for his work ethic. And it was Schauffele who offered an amazing story that exemplified the latter and helped explain why Rai was left hoisting the Wanamaker Trophy at Aronimink.
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
