AUGUSTA, Ga. — Fifty-four golfers made the reduce at this 87th Masters. Only two have an opportunity to win it.
Brooks Koepka (-13) and Jon Rahm (-9) are the handiest golfers in the event higher than 6 below coming into play Sunday. They’ll have 30 holes over which to salary one among the maximum expected brawls at a significant championship over the remaining a number of years.Â
Koepka has been just about flawless to this point this week. He made one bogey in the first spherical and hasn’t posted a miscue since. He began Saturday’s 3rd spherical with a two-stroke lead and proceeded to lengthen it to 4 over the subsequent two hours of play regardless of making only one birdie.
The four-time primary champion appears now not handiest intent on successful a 5th however making it look like an inevitability.Â
Rahm has been nowhere close to as flawless as Koepka — he has 4 bogeys and a double this week — however he’s additionally simply inside hanging distance at simply 4 again. He additionally has the benefit at the par-4 seventh hollow when play was once blown lifeless Saturday at 3:15 p.m. ET. Once motion resumes Sunday morning, Koepka can have 11 ft for par, whilst Rahm has a 9-footer for birdie.
The lead may well be reduce to two with 29 holes to cross.
This week — and in many ways, this remaining yr — has been development to a skirmish between two of the absolute best avid gamers of this (and in all probability any) era. The PGA Tour-LIV Golf storyline is apparent, however Sunday’s duel is ready way over whose league has the most up-to-date primary champion.
Koepka has his eyes on a 5th primary championship and three-quarters of the occupation grand slam. Only 19 golfers have ever received 5 majors and handiest 12 have completed so since World War II. There is a few actual historical past at stake on Sunday for the oft-ailing Koepka.
“The whole goal is to win the grand slam,” stated Koepka this week. “I feel like all the greats have won here, and they have all won British Opens as well. Look, I guess it’s one more box for me to tick to truly feel like I’ve done what I should have accomplished in this game.”
There is a private expectation from each males this is uncommon in skilled golfing. Not handiest do each Koepka and Rahm watch for being  three-, four- or five-time primary champions, they imagine it is going to occur.
A inexperienced jacket would put Rahm in some unique corporate, too. Only 17 golfers have ever received a Masters and U.S. Open. He would have each by means of age 28, which might be a extra correct illustration of the indisputable fact that he has been the absolute best participant in the global over the remaining seven years.
It’s uncommon a two-horse race like this unfolds at majors championships. So incessantly there are 5, six, seven or extra golfers who may win a event going into the ultimate day. That’s compelling, in fact, as a result of the viewer feels as though anything else may occur.
With appreciate to novice Sam Bennett (-6) in addition to Patrick Cantlay, Matt Fitzpatrick, Collin Morikawa and Viktor Hovland (-5), anything else can not occur Sunday. Not with the margin Koepka and Rahm have constructed on the box. Not with two grand champions to this point out in entrance.
It’s much more uncommon that each golfers eager about a head-to-head ultimate battle are such super winners. The 2016 Open Championship clearly comes to thoughts. One eventual six-time champion (Phil Mickelson) and one among the absolute best ball-strikers of his era (Henrik Stenson), the latter of whom went on to win, duked it out at Royal Troon. They completed 11 transparent of the remainder of the box.
Koepka and Rahm most probably would possibly not achieve the ones heights, however it is imaginable they may.
After a rain shortened Saturday, Rick Gehman and Greg DuCharme smash down a rainy and chilly day from Augusta National at the 2023 Masters. Follow & concentrate to The First Cut on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Regardless of the ultimate ratings, what we will be able to get Sunday at Augusta National is a rarity in golfing and a far expected finishing to what has been a peculiar week filled with myriad delays, stars exiting degree left and even a handful of pine timber toppling ear the seventeenth tee field.
What we will be able to get is a couple of cussed, prideful superstars fighting one every other, Augusta National and themselves for 30 instantly holes on a Sunday. Two of the thickest, maximum robust males in the recreation — either one of whom have a stature that belies their refined fingers and will most probably someday be amongst the maximum historic figures in the recreation — clashing at the position the place historical past issues maximum.
So, whilst a unusual few days had been tough to internalize and comprehend, the finish result’s all shall we need: Koepka vs. Rahm, two titans with a mixed 5 majors, each and every taking a look to upload every other of the ones little inexperienced Wikipedia bins that glance so small however imply such a lot.
On the first tee Saturday afternoon when Koepka and Rahm clasped their large proper fingers in combination signifying sportsmanship as the ultimate team in Round 3 was once just about underway, the message despatched was once transparent. This week and this event will handiest be determined when one among them — and no one else — comes to a decision to let cross. The different guy will then be loose to put the ones fingers via the sleeves of a well-known jacket.