Jon Rahm isn’t too proud to admit that the pain of near misses used to eat him up. He had always played with a fierce passion, but the only source of genuine “hate” had been reserved for golf’s most reviled honour: the best player not to win a major. It weighed heavily until last year’s US Open when he holed two behemoth putts to snatch victory at the last, and it made defeat easier to swallow when a turbulent final round wrecked his chances of keeping that title from Matt Fitzpatrick just a few weeks ago in Boston. “It’s a little bit easier to get over it,” he says. “And when I get home and see my [one-year-old] son, he doesn’t care what I’ve done, he just wants his dad. It helps me switch that flick from golf very, very quickly.”
It is not to say the fire has been doused a great deal either, though. Rahm has only played once since Brookline, at last week’s Scottish Open where he finished in a tie for 55th, and there have been quiet murmurs about a slight drop in form, even accounting for his win at the Mexico Championship in May. The whispers, it is safe to say, have not gone unnoticed.
