Jon Rahm had wandering eyes when he first got on tour.
Hed always be trying things, his longtime caddie, Adam Hayes, told me.
Hed be like, well, Seve did it this way.
Tiger did it that way.
Theres less looking around now.
Hes a man who has his life in order.
Jon Rahm didnt have his best on Sunday afternoon at the Genesis Invitational.
Riviera punched him in the gut numerous times.
But Homa, too, had lost his ball left.
It was then that the Golf Gods nudged the Spaniard forward once more.
On Sunday, it happened again.
Homa wasnt so luckyhis tee shot struck a tree dead-on and only traveled 186 yards.
He tried, unsuccessfully, to thread a fairway wood through the forest but duck-hooked it.
Just keeping that daily process as good as I have been.
So just keep doing the small things and keep enjoying it, having fun.
Hes had a chance to win every tournament hes played in 2023.
The victory is Rahms third of the calendar year.
Hes won two of the first three designated events of the season.
Hes won five of his last nine starts.
In those nine, he hasnt finished worse than seventh.
He is, without question, the finest golfer on the planet.
But thats been the case for a few months now.
Only difference is, now its official.
With the win, Rahm leapfrogged both Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler to become the worlds top-ranked player.
Finally, the rankings accurately reflect the current state of affairs.
I go out today and I see Jon Rahm shoot 6 under and I’m like, again?!
This is a man whos been great at every level.
He is a spectacular golfer, Homa said Sunday.
I’ve known him since college and he’s been like this since then, No.
1 amateur in the world, No.
1 player in the world, all the accolades…he’s probably Thanos.
He has a lot of the stones in his toolbox.
He’s a tremendous golfer, he has zero weaknesses.
He’s been this dude for a long time.
The guy’s incredible.
Fan interest is the currency the PGA Tour and LIV Golf are fighting over.
They have maintained throughout this process that this business must make fiscal sense if it is to continue.
So its not just that LIV didnt make money; it took in no money.
There are reasons for this, of course.
That wont be the case this year.
LIV has its TV deal with the CW.
That proposition seems more unlikely than it has at any point since the first LIV event last June.
The last two weeks really couldnt have gone any better for the PGA Tour.
While official numbers arent available, Saturdays round almost certainly drew more fans than any golf tournament in history.
That tournament, with its festival-like atmosphere, has carved out an identity.
His little tampon joke with Justin Thomas dominated the news cycle on Friday.
His superb play on Saturday had fans daydreaming of him carving iron shots around Augusta National.
Woods is the ultimate trump card in golf, and hes firmly in the PGA Tours corner.
Any event he plays in will immediately have 10 times the juice of any LIV Golf event.
From Ponte Vedras perspective, the fortnight couldnt have gone much better.
And Riviera absolutely felt like an “elevated.”
“I’m just so happy and thankful to all the guys who played, Woods said Sunday.
This is a big event, this is a big deal of where our Tour’s going.
Especially for Rahm, who battled significant nerves on Saturday evening.
Something LIV cannot offer: history, and legacy.
While the PGA Tour hogged the spotlight, LIV Golf officials worked the phones.
They had a few spots to fill in their 48-man league before its launch this week in Mexico.
Two of their offseason signings, Mito Pereira and Sebastian Munoz, had already leaked.
The final names emerged on Saturday: Thomas Pieters (world No.
- Dean Burmester (No.
62), Brendan Steele (No.
- and Danny Lee (No.
LIV entered its first offseason hoping to sign multiple top-20 players.
There was also supposed to be a trade/free-agent market of sorts.
Instead: six signings, none of whom are ranked better than Pereira at No.
But they are far from the needle-movers LIV needed to sign to inject some life into their product.
This offseason, then, cant be viewed as anything but a disappointment.
What, then, will draw in more fans?
Those things dont happen in LIV events.
Simply placing four individuals together does not a team make.
You just dont get those electric visuals of guys hyping each other up or strategizing together.
LIV doesnt seem to have altered its format at all after its first year.
The PGA Tour is finally, after decades of stagnation, evolving.
Perhaps the new TV deal with the CW will elevate the league.
And after this last fortnight, its growing increasingly harder to see LIV overtaking the PGA Tour anytime soon.
In defense of Riviera’s No.
10
PGA Tour pros lavished Riviera with praise all week.
Both the hole itself and the way pros played it have evolved significantly over the years.
First, the hole itself.
The greens nearly impossible to hold if youre not approaching it from the very left side of the fairway.
Even then, you need a pretty perfectly struck wedge shot if youre going to be putting for birdie.
When I first came here, no one went for it, Tiger Woods said.
Balata and persimmon doesn’t go very far, so no went for it.
We all laid up to the far left or to the right.
And the second shot wasn’t as hard because we played a spinnier ball.
Its been trending that way for years.
The turning point seemed to happen after the 2015 Northern Trust, which told a clear story.
The 49 percent who laid up combined to play the hole in 52 over par.
The thought process now on that hole is…well, theres not much of it.
Some ball end up in short grass just left of the green with an easy chip.
Others kick into the rough and are stymied by trees.
Theres absolutely an element of randomness involved now.
And professional golfers, or at least some of them, arent huge fans of randomness.
Theres no skill anymore.
Its just not a good golf hole.
I could not disagree any stronger.
The premise behind the anti-10 argument suggests that all golf holes need to be fair.
Good shots should be rewarded.
Bad ones should be punished.
On the whole, thats obviously true.
Its a treat to watch guys look so deeply uncomfortable on a 310-yard par 4.
Id also push back on the good-shots-arent-rewarded argument.
Max Homa, for example, birdied it all four days.
On Sunday, he hit is tee shot exactly where he was looking.
It finished in the perfect shot just short-left of the green, leaving a great angle for the chip.
He hit that to seven feet and the made the putt.
Rahm, on the other hand, overcooked his tee shot and found the left rough.
Hed eventually need to make a six-footer for bogey.
Good shot, rewarded.
Bad shot, punished.
Do more good shots get bad breaks at 10 at Riviera?
But its not like were throwing balls into a random number generator and seeing what happens.
Its a kooky hole, granted.
But one kooky hole among 18 never hurt anyone.
On the contrary, it helps.
Here aremy thoughts on a better-than-expected showing from Tiger Woodsand theheart-on-his-sleeve performancefrom Max Homa.
Langer reached world No.
1 and won two Masters, and yet his longevity is now an equally big part of his legacy.
But Longer keeps himself in remarkable physical condition and remains a highly accurate ball striker.
I loved running into Will Wilcox this week at Riviera.
For those unfamiliar, Wilcox played a handful of years on the PGA Tour with a crippling drug addiction.
Mark Baldwin of the Fire Pit Collective told his story in thisexcellent profile.
I asked Wilcox how hes enjoying his new gig.
Oh, I love it man.
This is way, way better.
Case in point: Tiger Woods on Saturday at Riviera.
His caddie, Joe LaCava, saw a girl behind the 17th green holding a pretty moving sign.
He alerted Woods, who went over to check off that second item himself.
So, so good.
It was Collin Morikawas turn to give a mid-round interview this week, and he did not disappoint.
You have to think NBC is noticing and, hopefully, planning some equally innovative stuff for their broadcasts.
Stanfords Rose Zhang won yet another college tournament, her eighth victory in 15 collegiate starts.
Thats…hard to fathom.
The craziest part: shes still 19 years old.
Until next week,
Dan
