In the glow of his third-round 64 that catapulted him to a one-stroke lead entering the final round of the Players Championship last week, Jon Rahm had a smile on his round face.
The occasionally dark and stormy Rahm had found peace. Shooting 8-under par on the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass can do that to a person. In his tranquility, Rahm talked about his maturation and how he had worked to overcome his temper, which can boil up in an instant.
“I’ve said it many times, (last year) was a year of personal growth rather than golf game. It’s been a work in progress of many years to get to this point, and it’s hard to do when you’re playing highly competitive golf. It’s very hard to do,” Rahm said.
“So I can’t attribute it to one thing because I worked on many, many things slowly, and this is what I called earlier a midterm of hopefully a very good final project.”
On Sunday, Rahm shot 76, making three bogeys in his first four holes. His stubborn determination to hit a dangerous second shot at the par-5 11th despite the more practical advice of his very good caddie, Adam Hayes, became a social media moment after Rahm dunked the shot in the water.
Caddies can’t be yes men, which is why Hayes offered his opinion. He made his case and allowed the player to make the final decision. That’s how it works.
What did Sunday tell us about Rahm?
Probably nothing we didn’t already know. He’s capable of brilliance and there will be weeks when he’s unbeatable but Rahm seems to play against himself at times. That’s not unique by any means but it seemed to bite him at the Players.
The passion he fights is also a big reason he’s as good as he is. Finding the balance, accepting the frustrations, is part of what Rahm talked about on Saturday evening.
He wants to take the next step. At the Players, he took one step forward, one step back.
Maybe the next time will be different because of what happened at the Stadium Course.
CHIP SHOTS
• With his victory at the Players Championship, Rory McIlroy jumped to the top of the list of betting favorites for the Masters, which is now less than one month away.
No surprise there. McIlroy should be the favorite. Six starts this year. Six top-10s. One victory in the biggest event to this point.
Here are my five Masters favorites at this point:
1. Rory McIlroy: Why not?
2. Dustin Johnson: Have we fully appreciated how good DJ is in the grand scheme of things? Maybe he needs one more major championship to give us a better historical perspective and he’s built to win at Augusta.
3. Justin Rose: He has finished in the top 14 of the past five Masters with two runner-up finishes. While Augusta allows players to fire away off the tee, it rewards meticulous attention going into and around the greens. Rose is Mr. Meticulous.
4. Bryson DeChambeau: One potential drawback here – Augusta National apparently won’t allow him to bring all of his various devices onto the course during practice rounds to measure whatever it is he measures. That could tip the karmic balance away from our favorite scientist.
5. Marc Leishman: No. 5 would have been Brooks Koepka until he lost 20-plus pounds recently on a diet which apparently hasn’t helped his game. Leishman quietly lurks on major championship leaderboards and he’s likely to pick one off soon enough.
• The move to March for the Players Championship was absolutely the right thing to do. The event had a fresh energy about it, the golf course was primed and Sunday’s final round was golf theater at its best.
Ideally, the Stadium Course greens would have been firmer and the rough perhaps another inch longer but it hardly mattered.
This was a big step for the PGA Tour. Jackpot.
• In four starts this season, Tiger Woods has finished T20, T15, T10, T30 and has not finished closer than eight shots behind the winner.
He’ll play the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play next week, which will give him at least three more competitive rounds in a format he loves. It’s go time for Tiger.
Encouraged by how he drove the ball at the Players Championship – working it both ways off the tee – Woods said his game is “right on track” for the Masters. But there is obviously more work to be done.
Woods has been solid but not spectacular.
He’ll play the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play next week, which will give him at least three more competitive rounds in a format he loves. It’s go time for Tiger.
• After being dinged with a one-stroke penalty when his putter accidentally moved his golf ball less than an inch on the fringe of the 14th green Sunday, Webb Simpson added his voice to the chorus of players complaining about how the rules are enforced.
“This is where I’m going to be loud and clear, like we have to get intent into the rules. We have to. Because it’s killing our game when it comes to these kind of things,” Simpson said.
Intent isn’t the issue. No one intends to hit a ball out of bounds but there is a penalty for it. Who judges intent?
It was a harsh penalty for Simpson, whose putter caught in his clothes and accidentally moved his golf ball, but turning rules decisions into questions of intent is a slippery slope.
• Patrick Reed was still getting comfortable in his new green jacket when he found himself sitting courtside last April at a New York Knicks game with comedian Chris Rock and rapper 2 Chainz sitting nearby.
“(2 Chainz) just kind of keeps looking down, and you can kind of tell he’s like, kind of looking down like, all right, this isn’t the normal guy that sits in these seats; who is that?” Reed said.
“Then when they announced me during one of the time-outs, a couple minutes later there was a time-out and he just kind of reaches over, and he kind of touches the jacket, and he goes, ‘So that’s the real thing, huh?’ I’m like, ‘Yes, sir, yes, it is.’ ”