Jon Rahm finished the PGA Championship in fourth place. He’s played in four Majors this year, and has accumulated two fourth places, in the Masters and in the PGA.
Out of the four Majors, he’s made it through to Sunday (and beyond) in two of them with the possibility to win. Four Majors he’s played in this year, and he’s continued to take giant steps forward, growing, getting closer each and every time to the ultimate goal of his career. After this week at the Bellerive Country Club in San Luis, Jon is one step closer to winning his first Major.
Rahm had a fantastic week. He played all four days below PAR, and was always at the top. Solid, powerful, on point with the irons and consistent with the putter, although there will always be the thought of some options that got away, where he could have capitalized.
In this PGA, Jon got closer than ever to winning a Major. He started on Sunday in the second-to-last game of the day, three shots away from the leader, the extraordinary Brooks Koepka. It was a good advantage, but it would have been possible to even out the scoreboard with a good performance on Sunday and, of course, a little help from the leader. This amazing opportunity that Jon created is the consequence of an exceptional job throughout the week, especially mentally.
Rahm looked stronger, more calm, more at ease, always in control of his emotions, patient, balanced, waiting for the right moment. The message that this 4.0 version of Jon sent is that if his game is good, he’ll always have the possibility of winning on the table, and if he manages to maintain this same attitude, it will be everyone else gunning for him because he won’t give anything away.
If we analyze this PGA Championship, there were only three golfers ahead of Jon. Koepka won with the same lowest score in the history of the Majors, Tiger Woods finished with the lowest score of his career in the Majors, including his 14 wins of course, and Adam Scott ended up with his best week of golf in five years. All that combined, which is no small feat, had to happen at Bellerive so that Jon didn’t win the PGA Championship.
Jon is on the right path toward reaching his grand objective. There will be four more opportunities next year and those thereafter, but meanwhile, there are still big goals to crush in 2018, such as the FedEx Cup, where he is currently in thirteenth place and the Ryder Cup, where he has already mathematically qualified for the Race to Dubai, in which he is currently seventh place.
Jon Rahm’s next event will be the FedEx Cup playoffs.