Man On Fire

Jon Rahm’s route to the top of the game has been quietly orchestrated and delivered in double-quick time. From a tiny fishing town in Basque Spain to the top of the world, this is his story.

He was different when he won the Spanish Under-16 Championship by nine strokes when he was only 14 years old. He was different a year later when he won the Under-21 national title by five shots. He was different when he arrived at Arizona State University (ASU) on a four-year golf scholarship barely able to speak more than a few words of English. And he was different again when he started notching up collegiate titles at a rate not seen since Phil Mickelson passed through the very same campus in the late ’80s. Rahm would eventually claim 11 NCAA individual titles to Phil Mickelson’s 16. Today, right now, Jon Rahm is not just a stellar collegiate golfer. He’s also one of the best golfers on the planet.

The only adjective that comes anywhere close to adequately describing his transition from low amateur in the 2016 US Open, ranked 551st in the world, to ascending to the ranking’s summit with victory at the Memorial, is meteoric.