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LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA | The U.S. Open was disintegrating Sunday afternoon at Torrey Pines, pieces of dreams coming apart like tire treads thrown from an 18-wheeler on the interstate.
Bryson DeChambeau, chasing a U.S. Open repeat, was making a double bogey from beside an empty carton of beer cans in a back-nine collapse he blamed on bad luck rather than all the misguided shots he hit.
Collin Morikawa, golf’s version of a diamond cutter with his irons, was blading wedge shots over greens for his own chase-killing double bogey.
Rory McIlroy, a few holes from ending his seven-year major championship drought, shanked an awkward bunker shot on his way to a Father’s Day-spoiling double bogey.
Even Mackenzie Hughes in the traditional U.S. Open role of dark horse saw his chances end when his golf ball bounced off a cart path and into a tree, never to come down.
In the midst of all that and with a sky full of paragliders floating on the cool Pacific breeze, Jon Rahm and his sriracha sauce temper, was the calmest player on the property, replacing volatility with a U.S. Open victory that made golf karma feel as real as the irrepressible smile on the Spaniard’s face late Sunday afternoon.
Like a good paella, put all of the ingredients together and Rahm’s victory seems touched by more than the shots he hit.
On the same course where he won his first PGA Tour event four years ago, in his favorite city in the world, just up the hill from where he proposed to his wife a few years ago and two weeks removed from losing a Memorial Tournament he had already won by building a six-stroke lead with 18 holes to play before testing positive for COVID-19, Rahm – playing as a new dad on Father’s Day with his own father visiting from Spain – won his first of what many expect to be multiple major championships.
Two weeks ago, Rahm was three-quarters of the way through what may have been his best tournament golf ever only to learn he had tested positive. Rahm knew the risks of having not been vaccinated and had rolled the dice. They came up snake eyes at Muirfield Village.
The man McIlroy referred to as “a major champion in waiting” won golf’s toughest tournament by making a pair of sweeping birdie putts on the 17th and 18th holes, leapfrogging eventual runner-up Louis Oosthuizen, with a finish as breathtaking as a Torrey Pines sunset.
But Rahm likely won this U.S. Open before Sunday, the final-round 67 serving as the detail strokes in a broader brush painting.
A month earlier, Rahm stalked off the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island in a familiar huff at the PGA Championship. Rahm had surrendered to his temper again that day – nothing new to anyone who has followed Rahm – and he looked petulant, not a good look any time but particularly not at age 26.
His caddie, Adam Hayes, told Rahm he needed to be better than that. So did others.
“He knew it. He was embarrassed by it,” Hayes said, standing beside Rahm’s golf bag with the 18th hole U.S. Open flag draped across the clubheads.
Sitting in an isolated room less than 20 minutes after getting the news on national television, Rahm took a phone call from Pádraig Harrington who told him the story of being disqualified for signing an incorrect scorecard while holding a five-stroke lead with one round remaining.
Harrington’s message was simple: How you respond will stick with you.
Others took the disappointment harder than Rahm.
“I don’t know what, but something good is going to come,” Rahm told them.
Call it karma.
For all of Rahm’s immense talent, packaged in a short, fierce golf swing, his temper has been his most identifiable characteristic. A collection of video clips is just a Google search away.
The line between a competitive fire and a temper tantrum can be a thin one. Hayes, his caddie, been there, front and center.
“Sometimes I just had to let him go,” Hayes said. “I just had to stand back. It’s like watching a train wreck. It really is.
“We can tell people all day but until you learn for yourself, that’s the deal. For him to mature the way he’s matured it’s been all on him. He’s looked at himself in the mirror, he’s gone back and probably watched the way he’s behaved on the golf course.
“Now having a little boy, that’s a big thing we talked about. You don’t want your kid seeing you act the way you’ve acted. Nobody wants their kids to see that.”
Rahm looked at himself, not others. Not the luck. Not the leaderboards. Not the excuses.
“I still had that grit, but almost like each miss bothered me less. I couldn't tell you why,” said Rahm, whose son Kepa was born in early April.
“I believe it's because I really set out myself to be an example for my son that he would be proud of, and I've done some stuff in the past on the golf course that I'm not proud of, and I wish I could eliminate it. But I've accepted it. I'm not saying it's going to be smooth sailing until the end, but I feel like that Sunday of the PGA changed things a little bit.”
Rahm started the final round three behind leaders Hughes, Oosthuizen and Russell Henley while knowing he still hadn’t put together the one good round he needed. It was in there, Rahm knew, despite the limited pre-Open practice time. But digging it out on Sunday was the challenge.
The expectations weighed on Rahm. He wasn’t alone in that regard. Oosthuizen didn’t need a sixth career runner-up finish in a major. McIlroy knew how close he was. Brooks Koepka had the scent. So did Morikawa.
This felt personal to Rahm given his history at Torrey Pines. While others were making a mess of things on the closing nine, Rahm ticked along like a man out for a beach walk. He strung together seven pars in a row on the back nine and was one behind Oosthuizen with two holes to play.
The 24-foot birdie putt at the par-4 17th hole rolled like thunder, sending him to the reachable par-5 18th hole with the tournament in the balance. After his 4-iron second shot found a greenside bunker, Rahm played a conservative bunker shot, resisting the urge to attempt a riskier shot toward the hole.
As his 18-foot birdie putt on the 72nd green approached the hole, a lone voice broke the silence, shouting, “Go in, go in.”
An instant later, Rahm’s ball fell in and the big man literally skipped into his first major championship victory.
“It felt like such a fairy tale story that I knew it was going to have a happy ending,” Rahm said.
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