Eugenio Chacarra Leads His Home Spanish Open on a Fractured Toe He Broke in the Dark

The best round of the Spanish Open’s opening morning was played on a broken toe. Eugenio Chacarra, 26, from Madrid, carded two eagles in a 5-under 66 at Real Club de Campo Villa de Madrid on Thursday to lead the early starters at his home national open, Golf Channel reports, while playing with a fractured middle toe and a slight tear in a second toe that he suffered tripping over his own luggage-strewn living room in the dark last week. He finished the round unsure whether he can play the second.

How did Chacarra break his toe?

In the least athletic way available to a professional golfer. Chacarra told the DP World Tour that after flying back from France he woke in the night to get water, walked into a living room with his luggage still in the middle of it, and caught the corner of the sofa in the dark. The impact fractured the bone in his third toe and put a small tear in his second toe.

He spent the following days with his physio and doctor working out what hurt and what did not, determined to play a week he had circled all season. It is a very different kind of golf jeopardy from Jon Rahm’s courtroom exit from LIV, which is what took the headlines out of this tournament before it started, but on Thursday morning it was the story on the course.

How did he still shoot 66 with two eagles?

By separating the two things golf asks of a foot. Chacarra said the swing does not hurt, so he can still make a score, Golf Channel reports. What hurt was everything between the shots: the walk, repeated over 18 holes, with the pain across the last 12 holes severe enough that he questioned whether finishing the week is worth it.

The scoring itself was not survival golf. Two eagles in a 66 is attacking golf, and it set the clubhouse target at five under, with Angel Ayora and Daniel Hillier among the chasers at four under, The Sun reports. Hillier’s round carried its own sideshow, a hole-in-one at the 17th that won him a BMW, Golf Digest reports. Nobody ahead of Chacarra on Thursday morning was playing with a fracture.

What is at stake for Chacarra this week?

The top of his tour. Chacarra is third in the Race to Dubai standings after back-to-back wins earlier this season, and a victory in Madrid would move him to No. 1, Golf Channel reports. He is already assured of a PGA Tour card for 2027, the route Joaquin Niemann has been publicly hoping someone opens for him from the other side of golf’s divide.

The second chase is quieter: he is 55th in the world rankings, and the top 50 at year end receive Masters invitations. A home win would likely settle that too. Weighed against a fractured toe with the season’s biggest purses still being argued over in LIV’s bankruptcy, his calculation this week is simpler and harder: how much walking can the foot take before a famous week costs him the weeks after it, a trade-off any player who has studied how slope and course difficulty change scoring would recognise as the real opponent.

Will Chacarra play the second round?

He genuinely does not know yet. After the round he said he was suffering, that it had been tough, and that he was not sure what would happen tomorrow, The Sun reports. His plan is 24 hours of rest and a decision on Friday morning based on how the foot feels when he wakes up.

That makes Friday’s tee sheet the next development in a story that started with a midnight trip for water. If he tees off, the question follows him for 36 more holes; if he withdraws as the overnight leader or co-leader, the 66 becomes one of the stranger footnotes in Spanish Open history, a hometown win that lasted one round.

What happens next in Madrid?

The afternoon wave and Friday morning answer most of it. Ayora, Hillier and the late starters will show whether 66 was a leading score or merely an early one, and Rahm’s absence, he withdrew to be home for the birth of his fourth child, leaves the home crowd’s attention exactly where Thursday put it: on the Madrid native with the taped toes, deciding whether his own open is worth limping through.