As the Focus Turns Back to Golf, Jon Rahm Might Be the Man at the U.S. Open, Again
Editor’s note: This article appeared in the June 2023 issue of Sports Illustrated, before news broke of the alliance between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and LIV Golf.
The list of players with all-star credentials as amateurs who fail to achieve professional success is endless. Jon Rahm spent 60 weeks as the world’s No. 1–ranked amateur. He starred at Arizona State. He appeared destined for riches.
But there are no guarantees. And that’s why Colt Knost, now a broadcaster for CBS but once a player on the PGA Tour who had, himself, won a U.S. Amateur, all but shot up in his chair when he heard what Phil Mickelson had said about Rahm as the Spanish golfer was about to turn pro.
Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated
“One year from today he’ll be a top-10 player in the world,” Mickelson had declared.
The year was 2016, and Rahm—who captured his second major title when he won the Masters in April—had just played in the NCAA championships, where he finished third.
Not two weeks later, Knost was in the locker room during a rain delay at the Tour stop in Memphis and joined in a time-killing conversation with Mickelson and Dustin Johnson.
“I said, ‘That’s kind of a bold statement, Phil,’ ” Knost says. “I know you’re crazy, but this one seems a little nuts.”
A bet was made. “Let’s have some fun with this,” Knost said, offering Mickelson 2-to-1 odds. The wager was five figures, Knost says, not disclosing the exact amount. “It was a terrible bet for him.”
Knost figured he had a few things going for him. Rahm was ranked 766th in the Official World Golf Ranking. He had no PGA Tour status. There was no guarantee he would even be on the PGA Tour in 2017, needing to make it through a qualifying tournament just to be assured a place on the developmental Korn Ferry Tour.
“And then he went on a tear,” Knost says.
Phil Mickelson knew early that fellow Arizona State product Jon Rahm would quickly be one of the game's best.
David Davies/PA Images/Getty Images
Rahm played his first Tour event as a pro at the Quicken Loans
National on a sponsor’s exemption and tied for third. He tied for second a month later at the Canadian Open. He had three more top-15 finishes before the end of the year and had moved to 125th. Still a long way from the top 10 but a lot closer than Knost figured. And his status on the PGA Tour was secured.
“Then he made that crazy putt at Torrey Pines. No!” Knost says, recalling the 60-foot eagle putt Rahm converted on the final hole at the Farmers Insurance Open in 2017 to win his first PGA Tour event. “Not that I wasn’t happy for him. We joke about it all the time still.”
Knost knew he was doomed after that victory. Rahm went from 137th to 46th. And he kept inching toward the top 10, getting there after he tied for second at Colonial to move to No. 9 with about a month to spare.
By the end of 2017, just more than a year into his pro career, Rahm had climbed to No. 4.
“I was a huge favorite in that bet,” Knost laments. “But for Jon to be able to do what he did ... ”
And that was just the start. Rahm has added victories each year on the PGA Tour, running his total to 11 after capturing the Masters in April to regain the No. 1 ranking he’s held at various times, making him one of the favorites to capture a second U.S. Open this month at the Los Angeles Country Club. He also added eight other victories on the DP World Tour (formerly the European
Tour), including three in Spain. (Editor's note: Scottie Scheffler took over the No. 1 world ranking after a tie for second at May's PGA Championship, where Rahm finished in a tie for 50th.)
“I am not surprised at his success,” Mickelson told reporters after finishing second to Rahm at this year’s Masters. “It was obvious to me at a very young age that he was one of the best players in the world, even while he was in college. To see him on this stage is not surprising for anybody.
“It’s hard not to pull for Jon, too. He’s such a good guy. He has such a great heart and treats people so well. I think the world of him as a person. And as a player, it’s obvious how good he is.”
Mickelson had some early inside knowledge. Rahm played golf in college at Mickelson’s alma mater, Arizona State, where his brother, Tim, was the Sun Devils’ coach.
“Neither one of us would have bet against him,” says Tim Mickelson, whose faith in Rahm was so great that he left his coaching job to be Rahm’s first agent out of college (he later opted to caddie for Phil).
Rahm’s résumé is filled with accomplishments from his early days, including back home in Spain. At Arizona State, he won 11 times, second only to Mickelson’s school-record 16 victories.
That’s not to say he did not have obstacles to overcome.
At the 2021 British Open, Rahm, now 28, disclosed that when he was born, his right foot was turned at a 90-degree angle to the left. Doctors broke bones in his ankle soon after birth, and he was casted up to the knee, a procedure that occurred time and again in the early weeks of his life.
“From the knee down, my leg didn’t grow at the same rate,” Rahm said. “So I have very limited ankle mobility in my right leg. It’s a centimeter and a half shorter as well.”
That led to the short, powerful backswing Rahm has today. “I didn’t take a full swing because my right ankle doesn’t have the mobility or stability to take it,” he said. “So I learned at a very young age that I’m going to be more efficient at creating power and be consistent from a short swing. If I take a full to parallel, yeah, it might create more speed, but I have no stability. My ankle just can’t take it.”
Rahm also overcame adversity earlier in 2021, when he was leading the Memorial Tournament by six shots through three rounds, only to learn just off the 18th green that he had tested positive that day for COVID-19, forcing him to immediately withdraw from an event he seemed all but certain to win.
Returning home to Arizona from Ohio via the equivalent of an air ambulance, he was then forced to quarantine. It was a week before he cleared two negative tests. He emerged from isolation on a Saturday, just five days before the start of the U.S. Open.
As tough of a situation as it was for Rahm, he supported the PGA Tour rules at the time.
“I’ve heard a lot of different theories: I should have played alone; I shouldn’t have—that’s nonsense,” he said. “The rules are there, and it’s clear.”
So it was that Rahm went from tears of dismay to tears of elation 15 days later, when he won that U.S. Open at Torrey Pines. Rahm somehow navigated the tricky South Course, while the likes of Bryson DeChambeau, Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka and Louis Oosthuizen could not avoid disaster. A final-round four-under-par 67 matched the best score of the day, as he birdied the last
two holes to earn his first major.
Jon Rahm expertly navigated tough Torrey Pines in the final round to win the 2021 U.S. Open.
Donald Miralle/Sports Illustrated
Rahm, who proposed to his wife, Kelley, at Torrey Pines, in 2018, had won his first PGA Tour event there the year before, when he holed a long eagle putt on the final green. The winning U.S. Open putt was much shorter, in the 15-foot range, but it was every bit as dramatic.
Oosthuizen was tied with him at five under par, and Rahm had to figure that he might follow him with a birdie to win. When Oosthuizen knocked his shot out of a greenside bunker, Rahm knew what was at stake when he lined up his putt.
“I trusted my read, and as soon as I made contact, I looked up and saw where the ball was going,” Rahm said. “It was exactly the speed and line I visualized, and I told myself, that’s in. If you could see my thoughts with 10 feet to go, in my mind, I’m like, That’s in the hole. And it went in.”
Rahm, understandably, celebrated with euphoric fist pumps as the greenside masses cheered.
“The way he handled the situation at Memorial says it all,” Tim Mickelson says. “Maturity is there. He’s misunderstood by the public. He’s the most caring guy ever. He’s very thoughtful toward the people around him. I’m happy he was able to do it on one of his favorite courses in the world.”
Rahm had developed a reputation as a hothead, another part of himself he has been working on. A month earlier, at the PGA Championship, he’d whined and stomped through subpar rounds and, when he found himself in 40th place, told the press, “I really don’t want to be here right now.” His caddie, Adam Hayes, said he “didn’t play well and he acted horribly. He knew it and was embarrassed by it.
“I said later that would be one of the most important days of his career.”
That maturity has been on display of late as well. Rahm could have sulked after four-putting the first green at the Masters to make a double-bogey 6.
Instead, he regrouped and played the final 17 holes that day in nine under par to share the lead with Koepka and Viktor Hovland at 65.
He could have let it bother him that he got the worst of the weather conditions, having to play a good bit of his second round in the rain, including the end of it. His third round started on a cold, windy Saturday, too. And he could have been put off by the slow play ahead of him during the final round.
But Rahm buckled down and persevered, closing the final-round gap to two shots and then avoiding any major miscues on his way to a 69 and victory.
In April, Jon Rahm added his name to the list of great Spaniards to win the Masters.
Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated
“I wanted to win it ever since I thought about golf and what being a
champion would be,” said Rahm, who praised the late Seve Ballesteros, a Spanish two-time Masters winner, afterward. “Obviously there’s four great tournaments we all think of, and, not to categorize them in any order, but this is one of them. I think the main thing, something that gave me hope and that kind of started when Sergio [Garcia] won in ’17, that pretty much every great-name Spanish player has won here. There’s got to be something about having a Spanish passport. There’s something about the grounds that transmits to all of us.”
Of course, it had all been building to this point. Disappointed that he was unable to contend in any of the majors last year—his best was a tie for 12th at the U.S. Open—and posting just one victory on the PGA Tour, Rahm became dominant this past fall, winning twice following the Tour Championship on the DP World Tour in November.
In the 15 worldwide events Rahm has played since the PGA Tour
championship, in August, through the RBC Heritage, which was the week after the Masters, he posted six wins and 11 top-10 finishes. Four of those victories came this year on the PGA Tour as he solidified his standing as the No. 1 player in the world.
By the way: Since Rahm first cracked the top 10 in the world in 2017 and caused a major hurt to Knost’s wallet, the lowest he’s fallen is when he was briefly 13th in ’19.
“I always joke with Jon that he should throw some of that money back to me,” Knost says. “We play together when we’re home [in Arizona], and I’m super happy for him.”