If ‘big data’ measured the human condition -and since it doesn’t, it’s not as precise-, if I were to introduce into the equation such important components as patience to see how a tide excited by the return of Tiger Woods moves without remembering that there are two more golfers in the game or what It is impressive to be next to one of the most important athletes in history, the best performance on Thursday, the first round of the Masters in Augusta, would be that of Joaco Niemann.
The Chilean, 23 years old, did not end up as a leader, but his 69 strokes, the best lap of his three experiences in the tournament he met in 2018 as a spectator, were an undeniable symptom of the player in front of him. In short distances he gives the feeling of being an invulnerable young man. Come rain, snow, be it a carpet like Augusta National, be it a field grazed by goats, Niemann will never sing a complaint. Everything seems to be fine around him, in a life without apparent whims, when surely, outside of football, he is the most important athlete that his country has produced since the tennis player Marcelo Ríos.
“The public? No, it was fine. They advised me to try to finish all the holes before Tiger so they don’t move, but they were very respectful,” he said in the patient tone that he always throws without sharpening the noise of each Woods shot was so loud that many times he couldn’t even hear the distances of his caddy.
Double PGA Tour winner
Winner of two PGA Tour tournaments, the Greenbier 2020 and the Genesis, Joaqun is a great product. It is by far the reference of all South American golf, a continent that has cradled good Colombian, Paraguayan and Venezuelan golfers, but in which only Argentina registered its name among the greats with Di Vicenzo and Pato Cabrera. Niemann, number 20 in the world, should be next. He dominates all sections of the game, he hits very long because he has a wingspan greater than height. The same typology that Sergio García had, his great friend, with whom he also shares a representation company, when he started.
His life and that of Borriol, 19 years older, seem intertwined. He started playing with a plastic stick at the age of 2 like Sergio -at four, already with regulation-sized sticks he hit his grandmother during a barbecue from 35 meters-, he did not go through American universities (his English now already polished he was not fit for the University of South Florida) and became a member of the PGA Tour at the age of 19 years, 6 months and 28 days, two months after Sergio.
For now, I left the blow of the day, when I holed from the platform below an eagle chip on the par 4 of the 9th hole from 100 meters. “I took a good shot and when I saw people start to get up and make noise I knew I was going to be very close. And I went in!”
