Looking back at Jon Rahm’s tears over the past 12 months as he won the Mexican Open consecutively

This time last year, Jon Rahm entered the Mexico Open with just one top 10 finish in his previous five PGA Tour stroke events, a non-competitive Masters he played against Tiger Woods at last round and finished in T27 and just one win since summer 2020.

Things, you might say, have changed.

Rahm won that Mexican Open against Tony Finau, Kurt Kitayama and Brandon Wu, and he hasn’t stopped winning since. He’s racked up 7 wins in his last 24 events worldwide, including 4 (!) at this year’s PGA Tour. Oh yes, and coming as the reigning Masters champion.

To the surprise of no one, Rahm found himself vying for a repeat as Sunday’s Mexican Open champion after entering the tournament as a +280 favorite, according to Caesars Sportsbook. Again, he will have to get past Finau, who came in with the next shortest odds of 8-1.

In the span of those 24 events, Rahm had 15 top 10 finishes with 7 wins, missed a cut and only 6 finishes outside of the top 15. He’s won strokes. on the court in all 24 stroke events and won 74 of his last 89 rounds. He’s, as they say, a hot-tempered guy (though, somewhat unlikely, he’s not leading the world in strokes over the past 12 months – Rory McIlroy does).

In doing all of this, he raised his bar in the minds of golf fans. He went from, Oh hey, Jon Rahm that’s a good player who needed two long shots to win his only major championship. ARRIVE, Wait a minute, what’s really going on here — is this guy a timer? within 12 months.

Numbers matter, and Rahm’s tells the story of a man destined for the future. But the numbers don’t matter either because you really have to go out and win tournaments and collect majors. Rahm checks all the boxes. Statistics boxes The boxes “he has the row”. Main boxes. Boxes around the world. He marked them all.

So how about now?

It seems to be a number game. Since the month Rahm turned pro (June 2016), he has been the best player in the world by far. He is hitting 2.25 strokes per round in that span. Only McIlroy (2.12), Dustin Johnson (2.09), Patrick Cantlay (1.99) and Justin Thomas (1.98) are even close to that.

What we’re seeing over the last 12 months is probably a slight adjustment to the average of wins. That is to say, a player of Rahm’s caliber shouldn’t have won just once between the summer of 2020 and the spring of 2022. But a player of that caliber probably shouldn’t have won the following seven either. 24 matches out. These things don’t happen linearly, though, and you’re absolutely sick of winning heaters like the one Rahm is currently on.

How can I be sure that Rahm is a go-getter who will own a handful of these heaters throughout his career? Well, I don’t, but I than sure of that than I am with anyone else in the world. Two things stand out.

The first was the best of the 50 laps of Rahm there alongside some of the greats of a quarter of a century ago. Rahm peaked at 50 laps earlier this year, and man, that’s crazy. Right there with Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, David Duval, Ernie Els and Rory McIlroy. No one on this list has fewer than 12 wins other than Rahm, and only Duval (mental breakdown), Day (physical breakdown) and Spieth (still playing) have fewer than 17 PGA Tour wins .

Rahm isn’t really a big physical or mental risk, and he’s younger than Spieth and McIlroy. This is “he’s going to have 30 wins and 5 major titles” territory. That doesn’t mean it will happen, just that it is maybe.

Second thing is this chart shows Rahm’s totally insane top 5 percentage on the PGA Tour. About one in three PGA Tour events he’s played in during his career, he finishes fifth. And Rahm doesn’t play bad with events. The blue line below is Rahm, yellow is McIlroy and blue is Spieth. If Rahm keeps posting percentages of these top duels, he will win a percentage of that percentage. The only way you won’t have it is if you have a win problem and Rahm doesn’t seem to have a win problem.

This week is perhaps the rarest PGA Tour event: a lousy court with the greatest ability of all time in the middle of a historic run. That’s why he almost won the event 2-1, and honestly I don’t feel too crazy. That 2-1 scoreline doesn’t tell the whole story, but they certainly do. Dig a little deeper, though, and you’ll see that the truth is represented by that 2-1 number, and that truth is this: We are currently witnessing one of the great careers in golf history unfolds. It probably took a Masters win for people to realize that, but that’s clear now and won’t change anytime soon.