Jon Rahm Wins His First Masters Title

Rahm was two strokes behind Brooks Koepka at the start of Sunday's final round, but he surged when Koepka stumbled to win his second major championship.

Augusta, Georgia. It was early for a disaster at the Masters Tournament—the opening hole of the first round—but Jon Rahm's internal speedometer had inexplicably vanished on Thursday morning. Rahm, who is used to fine-tuning his putts, found his pace off, his ball sliding far and escaping right, before registering a double bogey.

"Well," Rahm reflected as he walked to the next hole at Augusta National Golf Club, "I miss, I miss, I miss, I make," echoing Seve Ballesteros, the greatest Spanish golfer of all time and himself a victim of a Masters putting mishap. Rahm also considered the fact that, unlike Ballesteros, he had 71 holes to recover.

He most emphatically did.

Rahm, the towering Spaniard who dominated the PGA Tour in the first months of 2023, won the Masters on Sunday, overcoming days of punishing humidity, plunging temperatures, green-saturating rains, and tree-toppling winds, as well as that Thursday blunder on No. 1. His victory came beneath an eggshell blue sky, as he began the final round two strokes behind Brooks Koepka, a four-time major winner who missed the Masters cut last April.

Rahm eventually won the tournament by four shots, or 12 under par.

"I'm looking at the scores, and I think I still have a couple more holes to win," Rahm said. "I'm not sure what more to say. This one was intended for Seve. He was up there assisting, and he did so."

Rahm scored two birdies on the front nine in the final round, both from the fourth tee.

Rahm's victory thwarted the prime objective of LIV Golf, the second-year league funded by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund and then watched as it split men's professional golf into hostile factions. Koepka has been a mainstay on the renegade circuit, winning a LIV event in Florida last week. Following it up with a victory at Augusta National would have been the first time a LIV player had won a major tournament. The league's next opportunity will be in mid-May, when the P.G.A. Championship will be held at Oak Hill Country Club near Rochester, N.Y.

In Augusta, where the 88-player field included 18 LIV golfers, Rahm painstakingly killed the league's 2023 bid. Although the league had a strong showing behind Koepka and Phil Mickelson, whose sensational Sunday outing at seven under eventually vaulted him into a tie for second with Koepka, the tournament ended with Rahm, a PGA Tour veteran, poised to choose the menu for next year's Masters champions dinner.

Mickelson, a three-time Masters champion, is expected to attend as well. Koepka will not, even after finishing the first three rounds with at least a share of the lead, demonstrating a consistencyt until it vanishedt that was all the more impressive considering the weather and scheduling chaos.

"I led for three rounds and just couldn't pull it off on the final day," Koepka said. "That's all there is to it."

After a drive past the green, a chip that went way past the pin, and a par putt that slipped just past the hole on the sixth hole on Sunday, Koepka also ceded the lead.

The par-5 eighth hole provided an opportunity for either man to gain ground. During the tournament, both had eagles. Koepka's tee shot on Sunday afternoon, though, came to rest on a length of pine straw, necessitating a punch-out onto the fairway. Rahm stroked his third ball onto the green, putting himself in position for a tap-in birdie that increased his lead to two strokes.

However, there were charges near the top of the leaderboard taking place elsewhere in the trees. When Koepka and Rahm each made bogey at No. 9, a swarm of prospective contenders gathered considerably closer than they had only hours before. Rahm was on 10 under, and Koepka was on eight under, tied with Jordan Spieth, who began the round on one under. Michaelson, Patrick Reed, Russell Henley, Cameron Young, and Patrick Cantlay were the other five players at six or seven under.
Until the 12th hole, that wondrously botanical landmark in the centre of Amen Corner, the distance between Rahm and Koepka remained at two strokes. The 155-yard par-3 hole is the shortest at Augusta National. Koepka lifted his tee shot high, and it sank into the turf just behind the green, avoiding the bunker. His second shot missed the green, and his third sailed to the right and beyond the pin. He made a bogey putt.

Mickelson, 52, is now in solo second place after finishing his round.

Koepka birdied the 13th hole to tie Mickelson, but Rahm maintained his three-stroke lead with a birdie, his first since No. 8.

It didn't last long, as Rahm's lead grew to five strokes on the next hole. Rahm's second shot from near the tree line landed on the green and then rolled in a semicircle until it halted near the cup, setting up a birdie putt. Koepka's second shot likewise made it to the green, but it was further away from the pin. A long birdie attempt fell short, and a far shorter par attempt lipped out, leaving Koepka with a bogey, his sixth of the round.

He was on the verge of making an eagle putt at the 15th before settling for a birdie.

Rahm was four strokes up with three holes to go. Koepka trimmed it to three with a magnificent birdie after his tee ball cleared the water at No. 16, but his comeback options were rapidly dwindling. It didn't help that his ball travelled from a shadowed spot of east Georgia mud to where some spectators were sitting on his second shot at the 17th hole. He had made bogey on the hole near the end of the third round, and he added another as the event came to a close, bringing Rahm's lead back to four strokes.

Rahm and Koepka had both shot eagle on the eighth fairway earlier in the event.

Rahm, whose last major title came at the 2021 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in San Diego, was nearly assured of a green jacket and, months later, a Masters trophy etched with the signatures of every guy he defeated.

He jubilantly lifted his arms skyward, clasped his fists, and temporarily covered his face with his hands after making his tournament-ending par putt on the 18th green, surrounded by a thick, howling gallery. He took his ball out of the cup and tipped his cap.

"I never expected to cry after winning a golf tournament, but I came very close on the 18th hole," he remarked.

Even by the standards of a player who debuted at No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking in 2020, Rahm has performed exceptionally well in recent months. He won the DP World Tour Championship by two strokes in November. He won two PGA Tour events in January, both with scores of 27 under par, and he won the Genesis Invitational in February.

In March, he tied for 39th in the Arnold Palmer Invitational, withdrew from the Players Championship due to a stomach sickness, and finished poor at a World Golf Championship match play tournament. But he said he was a "week-to-week guy," content to go from one event to the next without becoming mentally caged in by his ups and downs.

"Every tournament I go to, my plan is to win, and my mind-set never strays from that," he remarked last week.

He had never finished higher than fourth at Augusta National until Sunday evening. However, for this year's competition, his sixth Masters appearance, he arrived with such a wealth of course knowledge that he believed it would be difficult to exploit it fully.

"I feel like it's very difficult to apply everything you learn here at Augusta National," Rahm said on the sixth hole.