Jon Rahm wins a lot of golf tournaments. Not as many as most folks believe a top-three player in the world should win (because nobody in Tiger Woods' wake does that), but far more than you might presume. He added another one on Sunday at the Mexico Open at Vidanta to raise his PGA Tour winning percentage to 5.7% and his career worldwide mark to an astonishing 10%.
That latter is nearly unheard of in the post-Tiger-in-his-prime era. Rory McIlroy has flirted with it at times. Same with Dustin Johnson. But when you enter into double-digit percentages and win at least one of every 10 times you tee it up, that's a modern bar extraordinarily difficult to clear.
Yet because of how consistently elite he's been, we expect Rahm to clear it by a wider margin than he already has. Strangely, even though he has been statistically the best golfer on the planet since Jan. 1, 2021 (and it's really not even that close), he only has two PGA Tour wins in that timespan. Of the 10 best golfers in those last 16 months, only Justin Thomas (one win) and Daniel Berger (one win) have fewer victories than Rahm. In that sense, 2021 and 2022 have been a bit of a letdown in terms of collecting championships and cashing in tremendous performances. This is golf, though, where you can play the best four rounds of your life but are still unable to control that the guy you're playing with was somehow better.
There is a scenario in which an avalanche of victories is coming for Rahm this summer. It almost always feels like that's the case -- like he's on the precipice of a "this is legitimately terrifying, and he has to be be a 4-1 favorite in every tournament" wave -- because that's how the No. 1 player in the world from tee to green should make you feel. At some point in Rahm's career that run will materialize, and it will seem like he's never going to lose again. Perhaps, after narrow misses in January, Sunday's victory is the genesis of it.
"I think I'm not going to count the COVID year when we stopped," said Rahm on Sunday. "I guess last year it took me a little bit longer to win, but in the past I had given myself a chance to win and I've been able to do it early. This year I got close in Hawaii and Torrey, and since then, not really. So I'm happy. I kept working hard even though the results weren't coming. I got a little tired about answering questions about stats and putting and short game and this and that."
After taking the Mexico Open by a stroke on Sunday, Rahm said he may have found something during a final round 69 at the Masters where he played with Tiger Woods. He certainly wouldn't be the first -- and likely won't be the last -- to dig a heater out of Augusta National's very famous sod alongside the five-time champion of that tournament.
"It's just how the game is," Rahm said of his inability to close out a victory other than last summer's U.S. Open (which, to be fair, is one of the ones you would pick to close out). "I knew I was improving, I knew I was seeing results and this week has proven that. I think that Sunday with Tiger at Augusta gave me quite a bit of confidence. I was a little bit technical in my approach, a little too technical.
"I'm a feel player, and that Sunday I told myself just go out there and hit the golf ball, make shots, see the ball flight and execute and I shot a 3 under without having my best stuff on a tough day. So I applied the same thing this week, minimal technical thoughts and just visualizing ball flight of the shot and getting back to my true self and I truly saw the difference."
Rick Gehman is joined by Jonathan Coachman and Greg DuCharme to recap Jon Rahm's Mexico Open victory. Follow & listen to The First Cut on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Rahm also putted the lights out in Mexico where this national open was part of the PGA Tour schedule for the first time ever. Rahm has putted better than the field in five tournaments this year and has three top-three finishes in those five events, including this victory. Most of the top players fall in the "if he putts it well, he contends," but none maybe more so than Rahm, who is the best ball striker, both statistically and anecdotally, of them all.
He couldn't pick a better window in which to get hot after a bit of a lull in finishes earlier this spring. In the next 80 days, Rahm has three cracks at his second major championship win and, of course, a second run at what should have been his first win in 2021 at the Memorial where he withdrew last year with a six-stroke lead after 54 holes because of a positive COVID-19 test.
So yes, Sunday's one-stroke victory in Mexico's biggest event of the year is a nice little tally mark for Rahm on paper, a reminder that he wins often on every tour he plays. But to him it could be a bit of a renewal of sorts. He started popping this time last year, as well, and took a rip at winning everything he looked at for several months. The Mexico Open trophy for him is great, but the timing of it all and what a win foreshadows could be even better.
