ONCE IN A LIFETIME TOKYO 202

Rory Sabbatini on his route to landing the most unlikely of silver medals in Tokyo and that fall-out with Tiger

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Late on Saturday night in Slovakia, crowds gathered in public places to watch Rory Sabbatini’s closing round in the Tokyo Olympics. Up until that point, they only had a shooting Gold Medal and a canoeing silver to cheer, but now they had Sabbatini, the oldest player in the field, screeching his way up the leaderboard.

The reason he was playing for Slovakia was through his wife, Martina, and she was literally right by his side as his regular caddie had quit on him to go and work for Jason Dufner a month previously.

To make matters even more interesting, CT Pan of Chinese Taipei had his wife, Michelle, on the bag as a one-off and he was in the middle of tying the course record of 63 and also threatening a medal. The two of them had teed off seven groups back of the leading three-ball on Sunday.

“I went into the final round thinking I had played myself out of a medal, so I didn’t even go there with any of the team uniform for the medal ceremony,” explains Sabbatini.

“I had a really bad warm-up – I hit about 20 balls before I finally handed the driver to my wife and said ‘I don’t have it here so maybe we can find something on the course’. I was trying to hit a draw and it would start right and go right, and then it would go straight left. Some of my best rounds have come after an awful warm-up. Golf is a silly game.”

Sabbatini’s start was as hot as the Tokyo weather. The 45-year-old birdied the first two holes, added another at the 5th and then holed his approach for an eagle at the next. Even a bogey at the 9th barely registered as he then rattled off four birdies in the next five holes.