Jon Rahm had no answer as to why he had both his golf ball and his marker in hand on the fifth green on day three of the BMW Championship in Chicago.
The double Dubai Duty Free Irish Open and double Spanish Open winner simply had a brain fade in picking-up his ball but with his marker in his pocket.
Rahm had to call a stroke penalty on himself in recoding the only bogey of his round but then went onto produce a four-under par 66 to move inside the top-10 at two-over par.
“Honestly, I can’t tell you what happened on five,” he said.
Jon Rahm has every right to get mad with himself after a bizarre penalty early on day three of the BMW PGA Championship
“For those that don’t know, I hit it 30, 40 feet short right of line and was holding my marker in my pocket, just went at it, and for some reason I just picked up the ball thinking I marked it already. I was thinking of somebody else and something else or somebody, and yeah, I just picked up the ball without marking it, simple as that.
“Once replaced it, took the penalty and moved on.
“I’m proud of being able to maintain my composure afterwards. I think the most important shot of the round was that second putt, the six-footer for bogey. Technically it helped out a lot. I was able to tell myself I was 1-under par through five holes. It’s not easy; the first few holes aren’t playing that easy today. Just more so proud that I was able to pull it off afterwards.
“I really can’t give you an explanation. It’s one of those things that happen in golf. Never thought it would happen in my professional career, but here we are.”
Twenty-one years ago, Germany’s Bernhard Langer did the same thing on the 72nd green of the 1999 Greg Norman Holden Classic in Sydney and in the process ‘handing’ victory to a totally gob-smacked Michael Long of New Zealand in the co-sanctioned European and Australasian Tour event.
