AUGUSTA, GEORGIA | Long before Sunday, Jon Rahm seemed destined to win a green jacket.
Some players are born big that way, and Rahm is one of those. Not just because he is built like a bear and swings like a lion on the hunt, but those things help.
It doesn’t hurt that there is an almost mystical link between Augusta National and Spain, a green-jacketed connection that runs from Seve Ballesteros and José María Olazábal, through Sergio García and now includes Rahm, who appreciates the game’s history the way a hungry man appreciates a hot meal.
Rahm was caught off guard early Sunday evening when he was told that he is the first European to win the Masters and the U.S. Open.
“If there's anything better than accomplishing something like this, it is making history,” Rahm said. “Out of all the accomplishments and the many great players that have come before me, to be the first to do something like that, it's a very humbling feeling.”
Call it coincidence, if you dare, that Rahm won his first Masters on what would have been the late Ballesteros’ 66th birthday and that it fell 40 years to the day after the great Spaniard’s second Masters victory, but that’s diminishing how much the spirits matter at the old nursery Bobby Jones turned into a golf course.
“It was in the back of our minds,” said Olazábal, who talked to Rahm about Ballesteros during their Tuesday practice round and was waiting in his green jacket when the new champion made the parade-like walk from the 18th green to the clubhouse area.
History will show that Rahm won this Masters by four strokes over a rejuvenated Brooks Koepka and a renewed Phil Mickelson, but what the numbers can’t fully illustrate is how Rahm got there.
This is a 28-year-old Spaniard who built a ferociously powerful golf swing around a club foot that limited his mobility and who came to college in the United States unable to speak English. Now he’s the best player in the world and can explain himself with a clarity, eloquence and understanding that few others could summon.
Rahm four-putted the first hole on Thursday, making a double bogey that landed like a punch in the mouth.
“That kind of puts (him) into fight mode,” caddie Adam Hayes said, the yellow flag from the 18th green leaning on Rahm’s golf bag behind him.
Rahm caught the worst end of a bad weather week, playing through rain and wind and cold. He kept his head down, his rain gear and layered clothing on and went from one shot to the next, always staying where his feet were, never looking beyond the next shot.
It’s a hard thing to do, particularly when Koepka is patrolling the property in full menace mode, his old swagger back and his advantage swelled to four strokes when third-round play was mercifully stopped mid-afternoon Saturday.
“We put in a lot of effort to try to beat the best guys in the world. So maybe that level of intensity and that determination is what you see and that's why I'm characterized as a fighter."
JON RAHM
Rahm went to bed Saturday night knowing that Koepka faced a tough par putt at the seventh hole and he had a makeable birdie putt. Five minutes into their wind-chilled mornings, the lead could be halved – it was – and the game was on.
They spent the rest of the day with Rahm pushing forward and Koepka trying unsuccessfully to hang on to what he had.
Before play began Sunday morning, Hayes had a simple message for Rahm: “Be 100 percent committed on every shot. Any caddie could say that, but there were a couple of shots (Saturday) that weren’t 100 percent committed, I felt. I knew if he could do that, he would be OK.”
When the final 18 holes began, Koepka stood two clear of playing competitor Rahm. By the fourth hole, they were tied and by the time they went to the back nine, Rahm was two ahead of Koepka while Mickelson and Jordan Spieth were stirring imaginations with the birdies they were making.
If a single swing solidified this Masters for Rahm, it was an 8-iron from the right edge of the 14th fairway that started at the left side of the green, then let slope and gravity take his ball to within 3 feet of the hole for a birdie that stretched his lead to four with four to play.
All that was left was to finish the fight.
“We put in a lot of effort to try to beat the best guys in the world. So maybe that level of intensity and that determination is what you see and that's why I'm characterized as a fighter,” Rahm said.
“I'm also never going to give up, right. Even if I shoot myself out of contention, whatever, and I can finish strong to give myself a possibility to finish fourth, it's always going to be better than anything, right?”
Each Masters has its own birthmarks, and this one was no different.
It began in many minds as a referendum on LIV Golf, and if that was the case, then the rebel league has reason to be enthused. Twelve of its 18 players made the cut, and three of them – Koepka, Mickelson and Patrick Reed – finished tied for fourth or better, undercutting the notion that the new league is stuffing bank accounts but siphoning away players’ competitive edge.
The newly lengthened par-5 13th hole played the way it should, forcing decisions rather than rubber-stamping every tee shot that finished in the go-zone.
The weather intruded, as it has done too often recently, turning Saturday into a sodden, shivering mess, disrupting the schedule and sending Tiger Woods home early because his mangled leg and foot wouldn’t allow him to go 29 hilly holes in one day.
There was a 40-degree temperature difference between Thursday and Saturday, but by Sunday afternoon, when it was time to pull another green jacket from the club’s closet, the conditions were sublime.
Rahm wore his new jacket Sunday evening with a smile that couldn’t fully hide the fatigue that came from playing nearly 30 holes on a Masters Sunday. He had been able to hide the churning that he felt inside, chasing a title that gives him two legs of the career Grand Slam.
“What is going on on the outside is not always a reflection of the inside,” Rahm said, tucked into his new jacket.
That’s from a player who was criticized, sometimes justifiably so, for his fiery outbursts on the course. Among Rahm’s many attributes is his understanding of himself, and it’s what led him to where he found himself late Sunday afternoon, standing in the golden glow at Augusta.
“Never thought I was going to cry by winning a golf tournament, but I got very close on that 18th hole,” said Rahm, whose 11 PGA Tour victories – four already this year – include the 2021 U.S. Open. “And a lot of it because of what it means to me, and to Spanish golf, right. It's Spain's 10th major, fourth player to win the Masters, fourth, and my second win, right, my second major win, right, it's pretty incredible.
“A lot of pride, and I am really proud of myself and what I did.”
E-MAIL RON
Top: Jon Rahm comes close to tears on the 18th hole as he realizes he is going to win the Masters.
Andrew Redington, getty images