Jon Rahm wins Masters title for second Major victory, reclaims No. 1 spot
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Jon Rahm celebrates on the 18th green after winning the Masters at Augusta National on Sunday.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Follow topic:
AUGUSTA – It was early for a debacle at the Masters – the first hole of the first round – but on Thursday morning, Jon Rahm’s internal speedometer had seemingly vanished.
Accustomed to calibrating his putts just so, he found his speed off, his ball sliding long and escaping right, before logging a double bogey.
“Well,” Rahm, 28, thought as he headed to Augusta National Golf Club’s next tee.
“I miss, I miss, I miss, I make.”
He was paraphrasing Seve Ballesteros, the greatest Spanish golfer of all and himself a victim of a Masters putting misadventure. Rahm considered something else, too – unlike his late compatriot and his idol, he had 71 holes to recover. He most certainly did.
Rahm, who dominated the PGA Tour in 2023’s first months, won the Masters on Sunday, overcoming days of punishing humidity, plunging temperatures, green-saturating rains and tree-toppling winds, as well as that Thursday mess on No. 1, to claim his second career Major.
His victory came after he began the final round trailing Brooks Koepka, a four-time Major winner, by two strokes.
Rahm ultimately won by four strokes with a three-under 69 and 12-under 276 for the tournament.
“Can’t really say anything else. This one was for Seve. He was up there helping, and help he did,” he said.
Adding to the emotion was the knowledge that his win had come on what would have been Ballesteros’ 66th birthday and the 40th anniversary of his second Masters triumph.
He died of brain cancer in 2011, after inspiring a generation of golfers in his country. Rahm had previously said Ballesteros was the reason he took up golf and that he dreamed of matching everything he achieved in the sport.
“I kept hearing, ‘Seve! Seve! Seve! Do it for Seve!’ I heard that the entire back nine,” he added.
“That might have been the hardest thing to control today – the emotion of knowing what it could be if I were to win. Never thought I was going to cry by winning a golf tournament, but I got very close on that 18th hole.
“A lot of it was because of what it means to me, and to Spanish golf. It’s Spain’s 10th Major, I’m the fourth (Spanish) player to win the Masters, and it is my second Major win (after the 2021 US Open). It’s pretty incredible.”
On the tour, Rahm has a reputation as a battler, as a player whose head would not drop even when things go against him.
With his victory, the Spaniard also became the first European to win both the US Open and the Masters, an achievement he was not aware of until it was put to him in his news conference.
“Out of all the accomplishments and the many great players who have come before me, to be the first to do something like that, it’s a very humbling feeling,” he added.
“I still can’t believe I’m the first. That is a pretty good duo of Majors.”
Rahm’s win kept at bay, at least for this month, a premier ambition of LIV Golf – the second-year league that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund bankrolled and then watched split men’s professional golf into embittered factions.
Koepka has been one of the rebel circuit’s headliners and won a LIV event in Florida before the Masters. Following it with a victory at Augusta National would have marked the first time a golfer had earned a Major title as a LIV player.
He finished with a 75 on Sunday, tied second with LIV pioneer Phil Mickelson (65).
Although LIV Golf had a robust showing behind Koepka and Mickelson, the Masters ended with Rahm, a PGA Tour stalwart, poised to select the menu for the 2024 dinner of Masters champions.
“I led for three rounds, and just didn’t do it on the last day,” Koepka said. “That’s it, plain and simple.” NYTIMES, AFP, REUTERS
