Good for the Game! Megha Ganne’s coming out party; Jon Rahm’s heartbreak; and two bruisers straining at the bit

Beginner Megha Ganne, ranked thirtieth on the planet, practically made historical past on the US Girls’s Open

Girls and Gents of the golf republic! To your leisure, and eager pleasure we current the bout of the yr. The large battle you’ve been ready for, a rousing battle of true gladiatorial proportions! Within the left nook, wielding the dreaded hooded clubface, able to trapping, and crushing a golf ball like gentle putty, we now have Beefcake Brooks Koepka! In the appropriate nook, the sci-fi fantasy champion, the scientist-turned-incredible Hulk, Bryson DeChambeau, finest recognized for the widest swing arc recognized to mankind, and able to flinging a pitching wedge 200 yards, even earlier than the ball will get there. These two males have been at one another’s throats, moderately publicly, needling and riling one another of their public utterances. And now, lastly, they’ve determined to have it out, the quaint approach! That is going to be a bruiser to recollect people!

Okay, so I’m getting a bit carried away. Nevertheless it’s solely a matter of time, given simply how public and nasty this mutual abhorrence of one another is turning into, that these two American champion golfers, are going to get right into a battle. I child you not. Have these two by no means hung out on the members’ bars in Ayrshire, or at Portrush, or County Down? And do they do not know, simply how a lot merriment their antics have to be producing amongst the blokes on the European Tour. ‘Tut tut,’ folks have to be going, quaffing from their mugs of lukewarm Guinness. Throughout the pond, solely the likes of Jack Nicklaus have to be sitting with their heads-in-their fingers, questioning what the heck has gotten into these two.

And now Koepka has raised the bar to a decidedly surreal degree. At a current press convention the a number of main winner indicated, bizarrely, that he thinks this spat is ‘good for the sport.’ That is the purpose when these gents on the bar, should have choked on their barley water. Simply while you thought it couldn’t get extra ridiculous. So, Koepka believes that this spat will get golf into the information, which is an efficient factor, and that such primal rivalry will draw children to the sport. Proper then. I’ll reserve remark.

On to information that’s genuinely good for the sport. 17-year-old high-school junior, Megha Ganne, whose dad and mom hail from India, burst on to the scene with a serious bang, contending on the US Girls’s Open. Ganne, who has a beautiful rhythmic swing, began the ultimate day 4 strokes off the lead, and closed with a 77, to complete tied-14th. Ganne definitely appeared to take the expertise in her stride, “‘I’ll keep in mind this for the remainder of my life,” she stated after handing in her scorecard.

Her mom, Sudha, is eager that Megha stays “a daily child and enjoys different issues…” apart from golf. Ganne will not be so common in ways in which don’t have anything to do with golf. For one she’s not on social media. Think about that, a 17-year-old, with an enormous potential for drawing in 1000’s of followers has chosen to not broadcast her life. That simply reveals a lot about this thrilling younger participant. And that’s why it comes as no shock that she doesn’t appear notably tempted by the lucre of professional golf.

Ganne has bought into Stanford and shall be holding on to her beginner standing. “She’s completely going to varsity. There’s little question about that,” Sudha advised the Golf Channel. Good for her, I say. Why hand over an opportunity to review and play for Stanford for a couple of years to do one thing you’re in all probability going to be doing all of your life.

Whereas Ganne has a lot to remove from the expertise of taking part in and contending in opposition to the very best gamers on the planet, there’s no such succour for poor Jon Rahm who needed to withdraw from the sector at The Memorial after finishing his third spherical. Rahm, who was main the occasion, was knowledgeable after his spherical that his newest check for the coronavirus had come out optimistic. I don’t notably root for Rahm, and his model of energy play, however this simply broke my coronary heart. And Rahm was dealt the unfairest card of all of them.

In different information, PGA Champion, Phil Mickelson, to nobody’s shock, missed the minimize the next week at The Memorial Match. You know the way it goes after you make a birdie: most of the time, you give the stroke again on the subsequent gap. Phil isn’t teeing it up until the US Open subsequent week; I doubt he’s hitting balls to arrange for that; reckon he’s sitting and meditating, intermittent fasting, amongst different new-age wellness mantras that the brand new Phil appears to be into.

My good friend, Shivas Nath, well-known in Mumbai {golfing} circles as the person you actually don’t wish to guess in opposition to in a pleasant weekend sport, raised a tantalising prospect in a social media submit after Phil’s win. “What if,” he contemplated, “Phil wins the US Open, after which decides to play, and win the US Senior Championship in July. What a uncommon double that will be!”

It actually would. Nobody’s managed to try this within the historical past of the sport. The one factor that might presumably steal the headlines from a feat like that’s, properly, if DeChambeau and Koepka come to blows. That’ll be awfully good for tv scores. And you may guess your backside greenback {that a} pay-per-view one-on-one contest between DeChambeau and Koepka will come up very quickly. I say, that if issues come to such a move, then the PGTI ought to invite the winner of that duel to the Chandigarh Golf Membership for a title match. I don’t care, how robust each these gamers are-neither would stand an opportunity in opposition to even the oldest member of that membership.

A golfer, Meraj Shah additionally writes in regards to the sport