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DUBLIN, OHIO | We’ve seen Jon Rahm coming for a while now and, at times, we’ve heard him.
Muttering to himself or slamming a club in the ground, his temper erupting like a sun flare, his emotions occasionally overshadowing his enormous talent.
It’s that way with some players. With Dustin Johnson, it’s his stroll. With Rickie Fowler, it’s his look. With Brooks Koepka, it’s his stone-faced menace.
With Rahm, who ascended to No. 1 in the world rankings Sunday with his victory in the Memorial Tournament at summer-seared Muirfield Village Golf Club, the underlying question has been whether he could channel the fire inside and keep it there.
And, if so, what then?
Well, here we are with Rahm supplanting Rory McIlroy at No. 1, becoming just the second Spaniard to officially occupy the top spot, pulling forward the memories and inspiration created by Seve Ballesteros, who, beginning in 1986, was ranked No. 1 for a total of 61 weeks.
Rahm wears it well.
Part of a Spanish line that runs from Ballesteros through José María Olazábal, Miguel Ángel Jiménez and Sergio García, among others, Rahm plays not just with fire but with finesse, power and an element of artistry that’s missing from many of the players of his generations whom he has surpassed.
He showed all of that Sunday during the final nine holes when what had been an eight-stroke lead was melting.
Rahm tomahawked his driver into the tee box at the 11th after setting in motion a shocking double bogey that let Ryan Palmer think he could still win. It was an instant inferno that disappeared as quickly as it erupted.
An hour later with the air getting sucked out of the Ohio afternoon as his lead narrowed, Rahm holed a delicate pitch shot from the greenside rough at 16 for a birdie that would have made Ballesteros smile.
“It was exactly what I needed,” Rahm said.
What he didn’t know was he would be dinged with a two-stroke penalty for his ball moving slightly as he addressed the pitch-in at the 16th. Ultimately, it changed his margin of victory from five shots to three ahead of Palmer, whom he teamed with last year for a Zurich Classic victory.
Rahm, already one of the best drivers in the game, has made himself better by studying himself, taking the good and honing it while trying to learn from the rest of it.
“All I can say is, yes that ball moved, as minimal as it was,” said Rahm, who said he was unaware of the movement until seeing video on an iPad after the round. “It doesn’t change the outcome of the tournament. It just puts a bit of an asterisk. ... I just wish I could keep that birdie because it was one of the great shots of my career.”
Rahm, already one of the best drivers in the game, has made himself better by studying himself, taking the good and honing it while trying to learn from the rest of it. Swing coaches and sports psychologists can only take a player so far. The biggest steps are up to the golfer.
There is no graph, no equation that Rahm can pull out to show how he’s become better at handling his emotions – but he knows. It remains a work in progress, finding the equilibrium between fueling the fire and containing it.
“(Sunday) was a clear example,” Rahm said. “I could have completely lost it, maybe in the past I would have, but I kept grinding.”
There is a difference between being No. 1 in the world and being considered a great player. Luke Donald, No. 1 for 40 weeks, is one example. Rahm, who has three top-four finishes in majors, is still building his career résumé – he practically limped up the final step of the world ranking ladder with his final nine holes Sunday – and he will be as good a choice as any at the PGA Championship in three weeks.
Helped by veteran caddie Adam Hayes, Rahm has grown as a player, filling in the areas between shots. At dangerously fiery Muirfield Village (at least until the Sunday afternoon rain showers), where every shot into a green seemed to have a hold-your-breath feel, Rahm didn’t let the conditions dictate his demeanor.
With a hot wind blowing and bent grass putting surfaces pushed to their gray-green edge, it was golf’s version of walking on broken glass. What could have been Rahm’s undoing instead became his ascension.
He called his third-round 68, which staked him to a four-shot lead entering Sunday, one of the best rounds of golf he’s played, and the week one of the best performances of his career.
“It's unbelievable, and it's hard to believe how passively it came compared to how I played usually,” Rahm said. “There's definitely been moments out there … where I could have just lost it or maybe in the past I would have gotten more frustrated and changed my game plan. ...
Like a superhero saving the day or the romantic lead racing back to his true love at the end of a movie, the PGA Tour needed what Nicklaus, Muirfield Village and Mother Nature delivered after weeks of silly-low scores.
Was the golf course over the edge? Borderline – especially with 15 of 18 Sunday flags cut within four paces of the edges of the crispy greens – but it was a reassuring antidote to weeks of bomb-and-gouge birdies.
“It’s difficult, but it’s not over the top,” Woods said.
Was Nicklaus, who very publicly challenged the USGA and the R&A to address the ongoing distance debate, making a heavy-handed point with the course set-up? That falls under the official purview of the PGA Tour but, just like Nicklaus didn’t allow the club’s famous milkshakes to be served at the Workday event (except to winner Collin Morikawa), he is Jack Nicklaus and Muirfield Village is his place.
The grass already was removed from the sixth green at Muirfield Village before play ended Sunday, the first step in a major renovation project, but the point was made last week: Firm, fast conditions provide the best test.
They don’t nullify the distance debate but they alter the equation. Still, one element of the Muirfield Village makeover is to build some new tees and relocate some fairway bunkers so that it’s not necessary to grow a jungle off every fairway. To quote Nicklaus:
“The golf ball is a very, very simple thing to fix. And I’ve been preaching about it, good gracious, I've been preaching about it now ... 43 years (ago) I first went to the USGA. I mean, that’s a long time to be saying, ‘Well, we’re studying it.’ Guys, stop studying. Do something, will you please?”
Please.
But enough about golf politics and back to the game’s new No. 1.
Rahm, who had two marriage ceremonies in the past eight months (one in his native Spain, one in the United States), has lost two family members during the quarantine including his grandmother, whose ashes were taken to her family in Madrid on Saturday. He has missed funerals and family, pieces of a person that don’t show up on scorecards but are part of their story.
He carried that and more with him at the Memorial Tournament – all the way to the top of the world.
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