Jon Rahm: Shaky start to statement win at the Augusta Masters

If you add some compassion and plenty of intelligence to the raw aggression and single-mindedness of a Spanish fighting bull, you’d probably end up with something close to Jon Rahm.

The 87th Masters champion, known as ‘Rahmbo’ to his fans, came out all guns blazing at Augusta National Golf Club in Sunday’s final round. Just like Sylvester Stallone’s iconic character, Rambo, or a Spanish fighting bull, he surmounted all opposition, winning the first major championship of the year by a whopping margin of four shots.

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Of the 88 players in the field, it probably was down to Rahm’s attitude, and his fortitude. Very rarely has someone won the Masters by four shots. It becomes an even more remarkable achievement if you start with a four-putt double bogey on the very first hole.

It was a huge blunder, but Rahm, as usual, found a silver lining in the situation.

“If you’re going to make a double or four-putt, it might as well be the first hole. 71 holes to make it up. After that, I was focused that all strokes were good. The reads were good. The roll was good. Once I kind of accepted that there was nothing really to look into except that the speed on the first two putts was off, I just got to work and I had 17 holes to make up,” said Rahm, who became the fourth Spaniard champion to don the Green Jacket and gets back to No1 in the Official World Golf Rankings.

Then, the 28-year-old got caught in the worst half of the draw. As Brooks Koepka set the clubhouse target at 12-under par at the halfway stage playing late Thursday-early Friday, Rahm was among those who caught the worst of weather late Friday and Saturday.

If the 65 in the first round was brilliant, the second-round 69 was somehow even better. The conditions were brutal with the temperature plummeting to around 7-8 degrees Celsius that felt sub zero, constant rain and wind making the easiest of decisions difficult.

The final day was going to be a marathon – a battle of physical endurance and mental tenacity.

Rahm was up against one of the finest major players in recent times, Koepka having won four of them in the period of 2017 to 2019 before his career got derailed by a series of injuries.

However, it was Koepka who blinked, much before the pressure ramped up on the back nine. Imperious on the par-5s in the first three rounds, he made a bogey on the first of three par-3s and narrowly missed short putts on the second and ninth. By the time he woke up and started making some noise later in the round, Rahm had reached a different postcode.

A semblance of fight came from unexpected quarters. A 52-year-old Phil Mickelson decided Sunday at the Masters was probably the best stage to prove to the world that there was life in the old dog. But a brilliant seven-under par 65, the best round of the day, could only elevate him to a tied second-place finish alongside Koepka – which also made for some good advertisement for the quality of golf on the much-maligned LIV Golf League.

There is never any shortage of emotions when a Spaniard is involved, but Sunday was extra special – it was the birthday of the late Seve Ballesteros, the first non-American, apart from Gary Player, to win a Green Jacket in 1980.

Hugged by a jubilant Jose Maria Olazabal – the other two-time Masters champion from his country apart from Seve – on the side of the 18th green, an emotional Rahm later said: “This one is for Seve.

“It’s hard to put it into words. Obviously, we all dream of things like this as players, and you try to visualise what it's going to feel like. And when I hit that third shot on the green, and I could tell it was close from the crowd’s reaction, the wave of emotion of so many things just overtook me. Never thought I was going to cry after winning a golf tournament, but I got very close on that 18th hole.

“A lot of it is because of what it means to me, and to Spanish golf. And to play the way I did on Sunday, only one bogey in difficult conditions, it’s hard to explain. I am really proud of myself.”

The second major is just the start of what promises to be an outstanding career. His form has been stunning. Since the 2022 BMW PGA Championship in September, he has won six titles in 14 starts, and has four top-eights. Even since then, Rahm has believed he is the best player in the world and was never afraid or embarrassed to call himself that.

After Sunday evening at Augusta National, we don’t think anyone will doubt anything he proclaims.

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