Jon Rahm’s brilliant battle with Brooks Koepka shows true cost of golf’s civil war

Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka going head-to-head in a duel that endured two enthralling rounds, heavyweight versus heavyweight trading blows until Koepka, finally, lay flat on the canvas. Two world-class athletes at the top of their game, raw, relentless, proper gritty sport of the highest calibre. Wouldn’t it be neat if this could catch on?

Rewind to the 1st tee yesterday (Sunday) afternoon. Koepka pulls his drive way left. He did that twice in the morning when completing the third round, but this one is even worse; it’s so far right that it trickles through on to the 9th fairway. Is it already getting to him? Is the final-day pressure and the lead of the Masters worming its way into his mind and down his arms into his ability to release his driver with the same rotation and timing that had dominated in Augusta all week?

Rahm then has the chance to capitalise, but he cannot land the blow and Koepka then somehow scrambles his par. “You can’t touch me, Jon.” At least that is what he would have said if he had exchanged a sentence with the Spaniard. I’ve followed this pair for two days now and only once did I see them share even a word. And I may be mistaken there; that might have been Rahm talking to his caddie.

Koepka’s body language and ice-cold focus is spell-binding. It’s something to do with those slouchy I’ve-got-no-worries shoulders. He plays like there is no one else in the game. Yesterday (Sunday), Rahm was digging in for his personal battle to persuade his opponent that wasn’t the case, just to spark some kind of self-doubt in Koepka’s mind. And is that exactly what you were looking for, when Koepka lips out on the 2nd?

“It’s important to be in the final pairing, the closest pursuer,” Rahm had said between rounds three and four. He is right up close and testing him now.

Koepka? He hadn’t seemed particularly triggered by the wrestling contest from which they were taking brief respite. “I feel fine,” he said, between rounds three and four. “I’m just going about me. That’s it.” Just about me, that’s how it looks to be Brooks Koepka.

He was also asked: “What’s your confidence level going into this final round?” And his answer was also very much in character: “It’s pretty good. How could you not be, right?” He half-smiled. Was that a foolish question? Or is it just that people don’t get what it’s like being me.

This was the psychodrama of the last day at Augusta, a day so absorbing that you could forget that these were the two leading protagonists in golf’s civil war, that Saudi money was ripping the game in two, that each side was so heavily invested in seeing in a winner from their half of the divide: Koepka versus Rahm, LIV versus the establishment.

Then we are back to the fight. Koepka is starting to feel it: bogey on the 4th and then a shocker on the 6th, from the back of the green, a chip that releases and rolls past the pin, on and way out into trouble. Where was his touch of the first three days?

And Rahm isn’t giving anything. The blows are starting to land. The Augusta National is riveted.

Thus, amid all this battling for pre-eminence and ownership in the game, there are, here, four clear winners and that is the Masters itself and the other three majors. Their elevated status already set them apart. Now they provide the only platform for golf to stage this kind of thing: the best against the best.

Greg Norman and LIV Golf took that away from the game when they triggered the breakaway last year. The majors bring them back together. And though golfers on both sides of the divide are earning more now that they are locked into their dispute, the game is only the poorer for it.

The most interesting comment on the subject all week came from Koepka after day two when he was asked if his decision to join LIV last year might have been different had he made it when he was in full health and not wondering if his knee injury might never reach the complete recovery that it has now.

“Honestly, yeah, probably, if I’m being completely honest,” he said. “I think it would have been.” And with that, we heard a doubt in the voice, the first public acknowledgment that maybe the LIV dream isn’t all it has been made out to be.

Koepka said that he missed playing against Rahm and the likes of Rory McIlroy. Well, you’re not alone, Brooks, especially if yesterday (Sunday) at Augusta is what it looks like: proper sporting competition rather than a money-making exhibition.

The Masters this week has served to demonstrate further the damage that LIV Golf has done to the sport. Koepka’s admission that he may not have made the right decision makes you wonder how long this folly will continue. Many are already speculating that there might be a Saudi U-turn.

Golf reunited? I just see these whopping contracts that the LIV players are on and the fact that they are legally unable to extricate themselves from them.

On to the 13th. Rahm is now three shots clear and knocking lumps out of Koepka. And Koepka is really struggling to hang in anywhere close. His second is long, his touch has deserted him. Yet he is fighting, scrambling, looking to grab anything to halt his descent. Somehow he gets up and down and sinks his first birdie for 23 holes.

We are witnessing now a gradual disintegration, one magnificent player trying everything to prevent it and Rahm, foot on his throat, not giving him room to breathe. This has been brilliant theatre; that is how it is when you get the best against the best.

You won’t see it again, though, until the next major, the PGA Championship, in six weeks’ time. That is what you get when you split the game in two.

Originally published as Jon Rahm’s brilliant battle with Brooks Koepka shows true cost of golf’s civil war