Weekly Recap: Rahm Records Another One

Jon Rahm won four of his past five full-field starts. And now this week he's going to the course where he's had more success than anywhere else. Can he possibly make it five of six?

Rahm kept his torrid streak alive with a one-stroke win over a gallant PGA Tour rookie in Davis Thompson on Sunday at the American Express tournament in La Quinta, Calif.

The win followed a victory at the Tournament of Champions to two weeks ago, after a win at the DP World Tour Championship in November and at the Spanish Open in October. The one miss for Rahm during the stretch was a tie for fourth at THE CJ CUP in South Carolina. And if you want to go back to just before the streak started, he finished runner-up the BMW PGA Championship in England. For what it's worth, some are saying Rahm won four of his past six starts, but we are not including December's Hero World Challenge, where Rahm tied for eighth in a 20-man field.

So what will happen this coming week, when Rahm returns to Torrey Pines for the Farmers Insurance Open?

In six Farmers starts, Rahm has a win, a runner-up, a third (last year), a fifth and a seventh. Oh, and that doesn't include his 2021 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines.

"It's too early to be asking me right there now," Rahm told reporters in La Quinta, one of whom asked about momentum heading into the week. "The fact that we're teeing off in basically, what, 72 hours, it's another factor than if I have time to reflect on that. But obviously, like I've said, I feel really healthy and I feel really comfortable in my swing. So I'm going to go to Torrey, a place that I'm already very confident at, with very high hopes, knowing that I'm doing all the right things.

"If I can keep hitting it off the tee and my iron game keeps staying at this level I'm going to have a really good chance at that golf course. So I can't help to smile because, again, it's a very, very emotional week every time I go. In a very good way. It's a very special place in my heart.

"So going very confident and very willing to tee off, very eager."

We haven't seen the opening odds yet, but last year Rahm was the favorite at +650 in a loaded field. This year, there are four others in the top-10 in the world, but overall the field will be far weaker than at last year's tournament.

Rahm will contend largely with Xander Schauffele, Will Zalatoris, Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Tony Finau and Max Homa. Though let's not forget about the other 150 guys in the field. Last year, Luke List came out of nowhere to win.

But the way Rahm is playing, it may not matter what anyone else does.

The 28-year-old Spaniard ranked second at the Amex in greens in regulation and 10th in putting average. Great numbers. Those are four-round stats. Because they used a three-course rotation at the Amex, strokes-gained numbers were tabulated only at the Stadium Course, where Rahm and everyone else who made the cut played twice. So strokes gained won't tell the full story of Rahm shooting 27-under-par.

Perhaps the most remarkable part of Rahm's streak is that it hasn't elevated him to No. 1 in the world. He entered the Spanish Open at No. 6 and the Amex win moved him fourth to third. The new OWGR system of calculating points is not doing him any favors.

But now Rahm is so close to not only Scottie Scheffler at No. 2, but Rory McIlroy at No. 1. McIlroy has 8.2261 points to Scheffler's 8.1915 and Rahm's 8.0024. That's a separation of about a fifth of a point.

With Scheffler idle this week, Rahm could easily overtake him. McIlroy will kick off his 2023 by playing in Dubai. 

Dubai's field will be weaker than the Farmers field, so a Rahm win opposite even a McIlroy win might still result in a change at the top.
 
The way Rahm is playing, don't bet against it.

MONDAY BACKSPIN

Davis Thompson
This was Thompson's 16th PGA Tour event as a professional (20th overall), and to finish runner-up – and runner-up to Rahm, at that – is sensational. So many times we see a young player, or any player, come out of the gate on Thursday and lead after the first round, only to fall back into the pack by Sunday evening. But Thompson rode an opening 62 into four full days of being on the first page of the leaderboard, and it took the best player in the world to hold him off. Thompson has a great pedigree – he's a Georgia Bulldog – plus three top-12s in seven starts already this season. He is a very big hitter with a questionable short game, so we're not willing to coronate him just yet. But he looked mighty impressive at the Amex. Thompson moved from 169th in the world, which had been his personal best, to 59th. The WGC-Match Play is still two months away, but that the top-64 get in. And the top-50 soon after get into Augusta, which Thompson surely knows.

Xander Schauffele
Bad back? No. At least not now. Schauffele returned after WDing from the Tournament of Champions with a back ailment and appeared perfectly fine. He tied for third with a closing 62 that included an albatross on the par-5 fifth. Really, if you didn't know Schauffele recently had a back injury of some sort you never would've guessed from the past four days. Back injuries could return at any time, but it's surely possible this has come and gone.
 
Chris Kirk
Two tournaments into 2023, Kirk has finished third and tied for third. He was great in the first half of 2022, too, so there's good reason to stay the course with Kirk, at least on shorter courses. At 37, he is back inside the top-50 in the world at No. 47, and that is no small feat considering the personal problems he has had in recent years, overcoming an alcohol problem.
 
Taylor Montgomery
Montgomery's astounding rookie season continued with a tie for fifth, his eighth top-15 in nine starts this season. The streak has to end sometime, but Montgomery is answering the larger question of how good of a player he really is. He's now on the verge of cracking the top-50 in the world at No. 52.
 
Erik van Rooyen
A former top-40 golfer, van Rooyen tumbled outside the top-125 with a terrible 2022. He tied for sixth at the Amex, his first worldwide top-10 since last April, so we'll need to see more from the South African before jumping on board.
 
Matti Schmid
The 25-year-old German and Tour rookie tied for sixth, by far his best showing this season. Schmid previously had missed four of six cuts with a best of T59. He did play in South Africa in December and finished fourth, so technically he has back-to-back top-10s. As with van Rooyen, we'll wait and see with Schmid.

Tom Kim
We expected a bounce-back week from Kim, and we got it. He tied for sixth. He was fifth at the Tournament of Champions two weeks ago before a missed cut at the Sony. We'll see quite a few top-10s from Kim this season.

J.T. Poston
Poston played in the final group with Rahm and Thompson. A double bogey on the par-4 seventh pretty much ended his chances, though he played the rest of the round in 4-under to tie for sixth. Poston now has five top-25s in eight starts this season, and he's not even putting well.

Robby Shelton
Shelton played two seasons on Tour, couldn't really cut it, went back to the Korn Ferry Tour last year, won twice, and is now back for his third PGA Tour go-round. And the early results are far better than they were in past years. The 27-year-old Alabaman tied for sixth at the Amex, his second top-10 in nine starts to go along with three other top-25s. There's a little more evidence that Shelton is turning a corner than for van Rooyen and Schmid, but we'll still proceed cautiously with Shelton.

Scottie Scheffler
Scheffler could've returned to No. 1 in the world with a win, but he was never a factor and tied for 11th. The way Rahm is going, it's easy to overlook how well Scheffler is playing. The T11 was his worst showing in his past five starts. Scheffler seems primed to win again soon, but he hasn't since the Masters, now 10 months ago.

Jason Day
Day certainly gave indications of a career renaissance during the fall with four top-25s including a top-10. And now he's added another good result with a T18 at the Amex. As long as Day's back holds up, this stretch seems real and potentially long-term.

Si Woo Kim
Kim tied for 22nd, and to do that the week after a win tells us a lot about him, that he is maturing and able to stay levelheaded to compete the next week.

Rickie Fowler
You could do this with just about anybody, but take away three bad holes from Fowler and he'd have finished far better than a tie for 54th. He tripled No. 8 on Friday and doubled 18 on both Saturday and Sunday. Seven shots better would've landed him in the top-20. A T54 is a T54, but there's no denying there is movement for the better in Fowler's game.

Harris English
English turned his career around in 2020 and 2021, moving to a stunning 10th in the world. But he missed about fourth months early in 2022 to have hip surgery. He's now been back about seven months, enough time to determine that he's not the same guy as before the surgery. English missed the cut at the Amex. In 16 starts since his return, he's had just one top-10 and two top-20s, with five missed cuts.

DP World Tour

Frenchman Victor Perez won the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship for his fourth European title. He also captured the Dutch Open last year and now he's back to No. 63 in the world – WGC match Play territory. Perez has been around for a number of years now and, while he's had some success, it's been in Europe and not against PGA Tour players in PGA Tour events. That's noteworthy because Perez is now second on the European points list for the upcoming Ryder Cup. Min Woo Lee tied for second in Abu Dhabi to get back into the top-50 at No. 50. Perhaps most notably, 51-year-old Padraig Harrington tied for fourth.