SAN DIEGO – Jon Rahm was on the verge of losing his temper.
That’s nothing new for Rahm, whose chili can run hot, but as he missed fairways and visited bunkers, he looked highly combustible. When asked on Friday about how Torrey Pines affected his temper, he snapped, his voice rising with a serrated edge: “Am I ever going to escape that question? Like I never lost it. I got a little frustrated on a couple of holes. Just not getting the results sometimes that you’d expect with certain swings. They weren’t that bad.”
Apparently anger, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Rahm overcame an erratic driver with a hole-out birdie and a bunch of clutch par saves in the middle of his round to shoot 1-under 70 for a 36-hole total of 3-under 139 and just two strokes behind Richard Bland and Russell Henley at the halfway point of the 121st U.S. Open.
“I feel like yesterday I hit it really, really well, hit a lot of fairways. Just made a couple of mistakes going into the greens that cost me a few bogeys, a few more than I would have liked,” Rahm said. “Today it was the opposite. Took me a while to get going, didn’t hit my second fairway until the 13th hole. I just had to survive.”
Rahm fought a case of the lefts off the tee, hitting just five of 14 fairways in his second round. He tugged one left at No. 5 and made his only bogey on the front nine, but bounced back a hole later with birdie. Rahm drove it left at No. 10 and went bunker to bunker but canned a right-to-left 10-foot bender for par and pumped his fist. His tee shot at the par-3, 11th was the first sign that his temper was flaring. With his tee shot still in the air, Rahm berated himself, bellowing, “Dude, how bad are you swinging it today? Don’t plug, don’t plug. Goodness, gracious Jon, that was so bad.”
But he rescued par again and made a fist with his right hand in celebration. He drove it left again into a bunker at 12, but escaped with a beauty to 15 feet and another par. It was the type of run that Rahm required to keep his round from getting away from him and potentially shooting himself out of the championship.
“I’ve got to say, that stretch of putts on 10, 11, 12 was key,” he said. “Things could have taken a turn for the worse, and I was able to save some great three pars in a row.”
But after roasting a drive at the par-5 13th, Rahm tried to mash a 5-wood from 272 yards. It didn’t go as planned.
“I just hit is so badly and it ended up so short in a tough lie,” said Rahm, who either was checking the flexibility of his shaft or on the verge of snapping it after the shot caught the middle of three bunkers short of the green. Then he chunked it into the next bunker. “Just making a bogey there was probably the most frustrated I got today.”
His chili was bordering on nuclear level when he dumped his approach at 14 into the front bunker, but just as a meltdown appeared imminent his anger level returned to a better place when he holed out his bunker shot for birdie and pumped his right fist in glee.
“I was a bit more vocal on 14 after the second shot because I felt that was a good swing and I felt like it just got gusted,” he said. “But, hey, I made the next shot, so I can’t really say much. I never really lost it.”
Making tough shots look easy, that’s @JonRahmpga‘s way! #USOpen pic.twitter.com/qmzNg3vHS5
— U.S. Open (USGA) (@usopengolf) June 18, 2021
Indeed, that was the key for the fiery Rahm. He’s never going to be unflappable like Brooks Koepka or Dustin Johnson, and that’s OK, but the U.S. Open tests every part of a player’s game, including his ability to deal with the stretches of discomfort.
Rahm, who relies on a consistent fade, closed with four tee shots that he described as exactly perfect, and closed with a birdie at 18.
“They were all exactly the way I thought they were going to be, the way I visualized them,” he said of the tee shots.
At the midway point of the U.S. Open, Rahm, world No. 3, trails just three golfers in pursuit of his first major and the key ingredient may be not a hot putter, but a cool, calm demeanor.
