The ACCIONA Open de España presented by Madrid was tinged with intense Spanish color thanks to the triumph of Rafael Cabrera-Bello and the second place of Adri Arnaus, stellar protagonists of a last day of competition where the intensity of the game, the alternatives on the scoreboard and the unconditional dedication of the thousands of fans present at the CC Villa de Madrid made up a resolution to remember.
Everything, in one way or another, was assembled to build a memorable outcome, with an impressive fan following that moved from the fairways and greens of the magnificent Madrid course to the television screens, with sensational audiences on the channels that have rightly broadcast it and have shown that, thanks to Rafael Cabrera-Bello, Adri Arnaus, Jon Rahm and Co., golf is a mass spectacle that arouses enormous interest in the whole of Spanish society.
In the heat of this intense battle, the greatest beneficiary, based on his accumulation of hits, was Rafael Cabrera-Bello, the most serene in a tachycardic final round that had everything over 18 simply thrilling holes and required a spectacular playoff to determine its outcome.
Leader early in the morning, Rafael Cabrera-Bello’s solidity on hole 1, with a two-stroke lead over his closest pursuers, crumbled at the first stroke of the putt, second shot to a bunker after a solid start to the fairway that led to a double bogey penalty.
The income, in a breath, turned into a tie, a new circumstance of which they tried to take advantage of up to ten players, yes, a dozen golfers with a chance to win, most of them from abroad, which introduced the final stretch of the tournament in a field with an infinite number of resolutions.
Rafael Cabrera-Bello and Adri Arnaus -who started second, also a member of the stellar match- were part of those winning combinations that were never defined because no one, curiously, took the step forward with birdie putts on the intermediate holes.
The growing tension and excitement resulting from this uncertainty of success, however, was broken well into the second round, generating additional tensions that resulted in a memorable show.
Adriá Arnaus was the first to take a clear initiative. The player from Barcelona, always present in the winning cards based on a hyper-convincing game, brightened his round with two eagles on 7 and 14 that more than compensated for previous difficulties.
Rafael Cabrera-Bello, meanwhile, bravely neutralized his initial double fault with three consecutive birdies between the 13th and 15th that sent him back to the top of the leaderboard briefly occupied by Adriá Arnaus. The tournament was moving with a red and yellow code, a Spanish dominance with growing connotations that became really effective from the 15th hole onwards.
Behind, the foreign options, mainly starring the Scottish Grant Forrest, the Indian Shubhankar Sharma and the French Julien Guerrier, were dying for lack of truly successful proposals, which reduced the outcome of the exciting ACCIONA Open de España presented by Madrid to a stellar head-to-head between Rafael Cabrera-Bello and Adri Arnaus, tied at 19 under par and two ahead of their closest rivals with three holes to go.
It remained, in practice, to know the name of the winner, in any case Spanish, to opt for Rafa or Adri, a very complicated choice in the hearts of the thousands of fans to which they themselves gave an answer through a final stretch for the dream.
There were three heart-stopping holes, of diverse options of all kinds, of small details that led to the 18th hole, where none of them, at the first shot, was able to get rid of the tight equality that had kept them chained since a few holes before. It was therefore in the playoff hole, when Rafael Cabrera-Bello’s proposal by means of a sensational second shot left the ball just a couple of meters from the hole, when the balance was unbalanced on the Canary Islands side.
It was the triumph of brilliance, the triumph of perseverance, of the pursuit of a goal, of that triumph in the Spanish Open that he has been pursuing since he accumulated all the Spanish Championships from junior to junior category.
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AROUND THE OPEN
A growing list of achievements
Two wins on the Challenge Tour -Man No Open Challege in 2006 and Challenge of Switzerland in 2008- apart from three others on the European Tour -Open of Austria in 2009, Omega Dubai Dessert Classic in 2012 and Open of Scotland in 2017- before contributing to the victory of the European team in the 2018 Eurasia Cup, constituted so far Rafael Cabrera-Bello’s sports resume in the main European professional circuits before this prestigious victory in the ACCIONA Open of Spain. Special mention deserves his list of triumphs in his brilliant amateur stage, when he accumulated the titles of Spanish champion benjamín, alevín, infantil, cadete and junior before accessing professionalism.
“This title comes at my worst time in a decade.”
Rafael Cabrera released all the tension of a marathon day once he holed that magnificent winning putt on the first play-off hole. He could barely hold back the tears when he referred to his family – “nobody has followed me as many holes in my career as my father, and nobody has put as many candles for me as my mother”- after a special triumph. More special than you might think, in fact: “it comes at my worst moment in the last decade,” he said, recalling a particularly complicated season.
Adri Arnaus, meanwhile, recovered his rictus just five minutes after the end of the play off. After releasing tensions, the player from Barcelona admitted that this has been “a very good week”. As his current ‘tormentor’ Rafael Cabrera pointed out, his first victory in the Tour is just around the corner.
Jon Rahm: “Only Manolo el del Bombo was missing”.
Unforgettable week for Jon Rahm in Madrid. His seventeenth place is almost an anecdote in a few days in which he has seen firsthand what it means for golf in Spain. Hundreds of people have been following his four games. “Except for Manolo el del Bombo, I think I’ve seen everything,” said the Basque golfer, who would have liked to finish better to dedicate it to the public.
Atmosphere aside, Jon Rahm addressed his last round and said that he had “never left so many well-shot putts within an inch of the hole”. “If I had made birdies from the beginning… but when you see that Rafa and Adri are at -16, it’s almost impossible. Luckily, in golf there is always a rematch,” he said in reference to Valderrama.
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Golf, the most followed sport on Teledeporte
The audiences say so. This ACCIONA Open de España presented by Madrid attracted an average of 78,000 viewers on Saturday and registered peaks of 848,00! It was the channel’s most watched program on a day of intense sporting competition. This figure is an endorsement of our sport and is a reflection of the enormous expectation raised by Spanish golfers, with the phenomenon Rahm at the forefront.
On the last day, because it was so decisive, we were sure to have come together even more.
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NOTES ON THE HISTORY OF THE OPEN
Two amateurs who outperformed
the pros
The list of winners of the Spanish Open also includes two amateur players, the only ones who have managed to win since its inception in 1912. They are Mario Gonzalez, who won in 1947, and the Count of Lamaze, who won in 1955.
Lowest and highest winning score, lowest and highest cut off
Record figure is also that of the lowest winning score, 266 strokes (-22), signed by Kenneth Ferrie (champion in a playoff), Peter Hedblom and Peter Lawrie in 2003, equaled in 2019 by the sensational performance of Jon Rahm that led him to his second consecutive triumph in an Open de España. On the other hand, the highest aggregate was in 1972, when Antonio Garrido beat Valentín Barrios in a playoff after finishing both tied at 293 strokes (+1).
Finally, the lowest cut took place in the 2003 edition, with 138 strokes (-6), while the highest was in 1987 with 153 (+9). Only the winner of the tournament that year, Nick Faldo 286 (-2), managed to finish under par at the end of the four rounds at RC Las Brisas.
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