Jon Rahm left the possibility of fighting for the win on the greens in the latest edition of the WGC Bridgestone Invitational held on the Sur de Firestone course, in Akron.
Rahm shot a 64, 70, 68 and 73 throughout the four rounds, finishing in seventeenth place, two shots away from the top ten and ten from the winner, American golfer Justin Thomas.
Jon’s long game was powerful, once again, firm, solid and had very few errors. Highly efficient. He caught a lot of greens and created an infinite amount of opportunities for birdie, but the putt was cold, just couldn’t warm up. Apart from the first day, where he did manage to capitalize on some opportunities, the rest was a whole lot of frustration and suffering. It’s not easy to take in without losing patience as the tournament is slipping farther and farther away with every putt, to the point which he finished the round on Sunday without making one single birdie.
If we take the putt out of the equation, Jon played to win. He was the second best on the regulation greens, seventh in distance on the drive, fifth around the green, ninth with the irons, fourteenth off the tee and second from tee to green. You don’t have to rack your brain too hard to see that, indeed, that was what was missing this week. The golfer from Barrika didn’t manage to feel comfortable on the greens at any given moment. That Friday after the second round, he confessed that he was frustrated at the amount of opportunities for birdie that he let slip away. He tried to move on and start over, but the reality of the situation on the greens kept catching up with him, and held him back from making his big break. It’s incredible that he made it to Sunday with the option to win still on the table, despite having had such a complicated week with the club that is probably the most important in winning the tournaments.
In any case, Jon landed another top 20 in the WGC. It’s the fourth out of eight that he’s competed in to date. He’s been bumped down to seventh in the world ranking now, and is currently in sixteenth place in the FedEx Cup rankings.
Now is the time to do a quick assessment of what went wrong around on the greens, draw up conclusions, learn from them and get focused as quickly as possible on the PGA Championship, the last major of the year that starts this Thursday on the Bellerive course in St. Louis.