MAN ON FIRE
He was different when he won the Spanish Under-16 Championship by nine strokes when he was only 14 years old. He was different a year later when he won the Under-21 national title by five shots. He was different when he arrived at Arizona State University (ASU) on a four-year golf scholarship barely able to speak more than a few words of English. And he was different again when he started notching up collegiate titles at a rate not seen since Phil Mickelson passed through the very same campus in the late ’80s. Rahm would eventually claim 11 NCAA individual titles to Phil Mickelson’s 16. Today, right now, Jon Rahm is not just a stellar collegiate golfer. He’s also one of the best golfers on the planet.
The only adjective that comes anywhere close to adequately describing his transition from low amateur in the 2016 US Open, ranked 551st in the world, to ascending to the ranking’s summit with victory in last July’s Memorial, is meteoric.
Turning professional immediately after that US Open at Oakmont, Rahm earned his PGA Tour card in just four starts and has virtually camped out on leaderboards ever since. After winning the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines in January 2017, he embarked on a blistering stretch of golf that saw him finish T5 at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, T3 at the WGC-Mexico Championship and runner-up to Dustin Johnson at the WGC-Dell Technologies Matchplay.
In the final against Johnson, he recovered from going five-down early to take the match all the way to the final hole. But
