BMW Championship Recap: The Bomb Drops for Rahm

There's no getting back the three months earlier this year when there was no PGA Tour golf. But since the restart in June the Tour has been nothing short of remarkable, with heavyweight golfer after heavyweight golfer throwing haymaker after haymaker.

In the 13 tournaments after the hiatus and leading up to this week's season-ending Tour Championship, 10 of them have been won by, get this: Dustin Johnson, Collin Morikawa and now Jon Rahm twice each, plus Justin Thomas, Bryson DeChambeau, Webb Simpson and Daniel Berger. All but one is in the top 10 in the world rankings, and Berger is on the doorstep.

That is simply astounding.

The latest slugfest -- and perhaps the best of the bunch -- took place on Sunday in the BMW Championship at Olympia Fields, which played like a U.S. Open course. It came down to Johnson and Rahm, fittingly Nos. 1 and 2 in the world rankings, but 72 holes were not enough to settle things.

If you didn't see it live you've certainly seen it by now. Johnson drained a must-make 43-footer on 18 to force a playoff -- the closest thing in golf to landing a straight right to Rahm's chin. But it barely fazed Rahm, who promptly sank a 66-footer on the very same green on the first extra hole for the win. We're not sure where all the people came from, but the screams from the gallery after both those putts were pretty dang loud.

A big part of this three-month version of Can You Top This? among the game's best surely is the result of the sport being idle for the prior three months. Just about every top golfer has been playing way more than usual after the long stoppage. But that hasn't made the past 81 days – yes, that's all this mind-boggling sequence has been – any less riveting.

In a twisted way, you can thank the pandemic for one of the most fantastic stretches of golf in years -- and we still have the Tour Championship and U.S. Open in the next three weeks. Apologies to the Safeway Open in between.

After that, there likely will be a mass exodus of the top golfers in need of a break. The Masters will still be close to two months away. That should give the other guys a chance to win some tournaments.

MONDAY BACKSPIN

Jon Rahm
The win did not move Rahm past Johnson for No. 1 in the world, but the two couldn't be tighter, separated by less than a tenth of an OWGR point. Since Rahm has never won a major, WGC or THE PLAYERS, this was the biggest win of his career. Rahm ranked top-10 in the BMW field in SG: Off-the-Tee, Approach, Tee-to-Green and Putting – just what you need to do to win a major. For a golfer so good from tee to green, Rahm is a sneaky good putter, ranking 20th on Tour for the season. He will open "in second place" behind Johnson at East Lake.

Dustin Johnson
Ever since DJ was slammed by Brooks Koepka, he's finished 2nd-1st-2nd and regained the No. 1 spot in the world rankings. And the two times he "lost," he didn't blow it, he was simple beaten. Like Rahm, Johnson finished in the top-10 in the field in all the same SG categories. He is 50th in putting on the season, the third-best mark of his career. He will begin the Tour Championship with a two-stroke lead, but last year he finished 29th out of 30.

Joaquin Niemann
Niemann won the season's very first tournament at the Greenbrier, then didn't do much after that, with only two top-10s until the BMW. For the week, he led the field in SG: Tee-to-Green but was only 33rd in putting, and that's the only thing standing in his way. Of course, he's still only 21, so there still is so much opportunity to improve on the greens. He's back to No. 52 in the world, close to his career-best of 50th.

Hideki Matsuyama
After tying for third with Niemann, Matsuyama is back to No. 20 in the world, and it's a little hard to believe he hasn't been better than that in two years. It's also hard to believe it's been more than three years since he last won, at the 2017 WGC-Bridgestone. Despite making some long par-savers on Sunday, he ranked only 31st in the field in SG: Putting. He's top-6 on Tour in SG: Approach, Around the Green and Tee-to-Green, good enough to be elite if he could only put a lick.

Tiger Woods
These are Woods' last five results, beginning with Riviera and the other four coming after the restart: 69-T40-T37-T58-T51. He tied for eighth in GIR at the BMW yet couldn't finish in the top-50 in the tournament. That sounds like something you'd say about Corey Conners. Woods was 63rd out of 69th in putting. You would think that would be eminently correctable for the best putter in golf history. He was also 48th in scrambling. We'll see what happens when a well-rested Woods play in three weeks at Winged Foot.

Webb Simpson
He bagged the BMW and dropped only from third to fourth in the FedExCup standings, the difference of only one shot  at the Tour Championship (7-under vs. 6-under). Considering he'll be the freshest guy in the field after a grueling week at Olympia Fields, this could pay off.

Sebastian Munoz and Lanto Griffin
These two guys may have benefited more than anyone else from the stoppage in play. They delivered huge fall seasons, each winning a tournament, and that was enough to get them to East Lake. They may have made it anyway, but with 10 fewer tournaments this season than scheduled, they simply had less time to lose ground. That said, they both impressed at the BMW with top-10 finishes. And now they both have their best world rankings ever – Griffin at 73rd and Munoz at 80th.

Mackenzie Hughes
Hughes missed nine of his first 11 cuts this season. He is outside the top-170 on Tour in SG: Off-the-Tee, SG: Approach and greens in regulation. Yet he's in the Tour Championship. That's because he's seventh in SG: Around the Green and 15th in putting, and he needed both in getting up and down from a greenside bunker on 18 on Sunday. His life is now forever changed.

Patrick Cantlay and Gary Woodland
These two guys really stood out among those who were at the BMW but didn't qualify for East Lake. Cantlay was even leading on Friday before a third-round 75. He finished 34th in points and Woodland tumbled to 43rd. This season was so disjointed that it's hard to hold it again either of them heading into next season, presuming things will be more normal then.

Bryson DeChambeau
He certainly has cooled since his incredible stretch at the beginning of the restart. Since his win at the Rocket Mortgage, DeChambeau has finished MC-T30-T4-MC-T50. The T4 was at the PGA, but Olympia Fields played more like a major than Harding Park. DeChambeau was still fifth in putting but only 30th in SG: Off-the-Tee. That's not good enough for Winged Foot.

Jason Kokrak
To illustrate how hard it is to get into the top-30 from the back of the BMW field … Kokrak began the week in 66th place, tied for sixth and moved up only to 42nd.

Adam Scott
Scott only played three times since the restart and still was just a couple of wayward shots on the back nine on Sunday from reaching the Tour Championship. Two of those three events were top-25s, pretty impressive considering the other guys were in full form by then.

Marc Leishman
There has not been a top golfer who has played worse since the restart than Leishman, who was a remarkable 30-over for the week, nine shots worse than anyone else. Leishman played so well before the stoppage that he still qualified for East Lake. We have no idea why he's played so poorly, but you never know what's going on with someone's personal life and how he or his family may or may not have been affected during the pandemic.