There was no better player on the course than Jon Rahm this past Sunday at Augusta National. Surely, in fact, no better player than Rahm the entire week. His game in the final round of the Masters was exceptional.
A round of 66 shots, no bogeys, four birdies and an eagle. He handed in the best card of the day, and became one of the main stars of the show in the unfolding of the first Major of the year.
Although Rahm did not make it to the final fight for the win, his attack was memorable. It was reminiscent of those Sundays at Augusta, showcase to so many stars, such as Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods.
Jon wasn’t in the true battle to conquer the Green Jacket because he had lost a lot of ground the three previous days. He handed in three cards for par, playing better than what the results showed, but ending up eleven shots short of the leader, Hideki Matsuyama. The victory was impossible, although there was a moment where it seemed like he was going to pull off the impossible. Rahm’s game made that dream feel like a reality.
The best part was the show that started off with a birdie and an eagle on the 1st and 2nd hole. Off to the perfect start. So perfect, in fact, that even the eagle-eagle was possible, seeing as how he made a shot from the fairway that ended up on the brim of the hole. He had a more or less reasonable option for birdie on all holes, except for the 7th and the 17th. The latter was the only moment in which he struggled to make par, and even then, although all of his approaches were from very difficult and complicated areas, he made it to the flag, and was not far off from having landed the birdie.
The stats that best define Jon’s spectacular moment in the last rounds of the Masters was the card he handed in for 66 shots at Augusta, without having made one single putt from more than three meters away. He didn’t need to. His precision was astonishing, attacking each and every flag, and making one incredible shot after the next.
It’s Rahm’s fourth consecutive top ten at Augusta, and now 15 rounds in a row at par or under par. Tiger Woods boasts the all-time record in the Masters, in which he made 16 in a row between the years 2007 and 2011. Additionally, since his debut in 2017, no player has had a better accumulated total under par in the Masters. Jon is coming up on the Green Jacket.
The tournament victory went to Hideki Matsuyama, the first Japanese golfer to win a Major. Jon Rahm’s next tournament will be the Zurich Classic in New Orleans next week, where he’ll defend the title, together with Ryan Palmer.