IT WAS raining so hard that you couldn’t see across the valley when Jose Maria Olazabal teed off in the third round, and thunder was rumbling in the distance.

He was among the early starters, nine strokes behind Chad Campbell, the leader, but Olazabal is the kind of competitor who continues to believe until all hope is finally extinguished. His opening drive was the kind of shot that has bedevilled his golfing life, a block to the right hitting a tree, but he was good enough to hold his umbrella so that his caddie shared the shelter.

His recovery was also indicative, but of happier tendencies. He knocked the ball out low to some 50 yards short of the green and then punched a low wedge shot with such sharp control that it gripped the turf on its second bounce and finished obediently three feet from the hole. The putt was rammed underground. Two birdies followed over the next few holes and Olazabal reached the turn in an excellent 34 strokes. At that point play was suspended.

On the resumption, the best part of four hours later, Olazabal lost his forward momentum. Three painful dropped shots on the way home, offset by two birdies, including one on the last, added up to a 71, leaving him at two over par, one shot better than where he began a long and trying day. But at least he had completed 54 holes.

In his first round, Olazabal had been wayward off the tee and had failed to get up and down from off the green 10 times out of 11. He came out fighting on Friday — and fighting is his greatest attribute — and made the cut with a 71 that deserved to be several strokes better.

As a result, all three Spanish players in the field survived to the weekend. Incidentally, more than half of those who made the cut, 25 out of 47, were non-Americans, a telling and unusual statistic.

The Spaniards, Olazabal, Sergio Garcia and Miguel Angel Jimenez, present such a contrast in personalities that the usual assumptions about national characteristics are worthless.

Jimenez, a man who lives life to the full, is the most engaging. When Olazabal was nursing his depression after the first day, Jimenez was celebrating a level-par 72. His rented house in Augusta has 11 people staying in it, and by 9.30pm, puffing his cigar and with a gin-and-tonic to hand, he was making a huge paella.

For Jimenez, making the cut was a bonus for he came into the event in poor form and with low expectations. He has not enjoyed his past experiences of Augusta. In his previous two Masters appearances, he had failed to make the weekend, but now he was glad to stay in America, notwithstanding his contempt for their coffee and cigars that do not come from Cuba.

It’s not just that Jimenez is mindful that he used to be a caddie, took up the game at 15 and reached the higher ranks of professionals, or even that he once worked as a mechanic in Malaga and now burns down that awful highway along the Costa del Sol in a Ferrari. He’s just an expansive, joyful person. Two early birdies in his third round brought further smiles. As he went round Amen Corner, he was level par and in good shape for a high finish, and a further birdie at the 14th got him onto the leaderboard.

Garcia is usually a sunny chap as well. But he was more than annoyed after his second-round 74. The conditions were supposed to be fast and running, which he enjoys, but he complained that the greens had been over-watered and that even some of the landing areas for drives had been sprinkled overnight. His drive on the 10th, which was on the fairway, was covered with mud. Twice in his seven previous appearances at the Masters, Garcia has finished in the top 10. He is still a young man as a golfer at 26, but he showed such precocious talent that many are beginning to wonder whether he will ever break through and win the major championship so many people expected him to have achieved by now.

He certainly came to grief yesterday, cutting a miserable figure as he went out in 39 before dropping four further shots on the 10th and 11th.

It does not help him that The Masters has changed so much in character. In the swashbuckling days of Seve Ballesteros, the Spaniard to whom all three owe so much, it was the one Major in which a bold bid for glory was often worth the risk. These days, when an errant drive rarely goes unpunished, calculation and accuracy are the requirements. Those are against Garcia’s instincts, and they are so contrary to Ballesteros’s approach that one is glad he is no longer here to suffer.

Garcia and Olazabal will be in Europe’s Ryder Cup team in September for sure. Jimenez is at present a fringe contender. Every one of them, each in his way, is a more than worthy man to have.