Hopefully you were able to enjoy this past Sunday watching the Masters. If you did, you saw a truly masterful display of golf by Jon Rahm who was vaulted back to World No. 1 in the OWGR. How was he able to accomplish this feat even under what most would argue was a much more difficult draw in terms of tee times and holes played under the toughest conditions? Let’s look at Jon Rahm’s skillset.
First of all, Jon is currently ranked 1st on the PGA Tour this year in Strokes Gained total. Here is the breakdown of where he ranks in different parts of the game:
Strokes Gained off the Tee – 28th
Strokes Gained Approach to the Green – 3rd
Strokes Gained Around the Green – 17th
Strokes Gained Putting – 11th
Amazingly Strokes Gained off the Tee is where Jon ranks the lowest relative to other parts of his game this year, but at Augusta he drove the ball well enough to rank 5th off the tee for the week. Clearly there are no weaknesses in Jon’s game. The advantage of not having any weaknesses is that it’s very unlikely to hit two bad shots in a row. When Jon hits a bad drive he knows how to recover, when he misses a green his short game is there to pick him up, and he knows how to hole those key putts.
Jon displayed good shot after good shot on Sunday, obviously the culmination of years of developing those parts of his game. Jon must have spent substantial amounts of time on all parts of the game throughout the years. With so many people falling prey to the temptation of hitting balls for hours and neglecting other areas of the game let this be a lesson in what is actually required to shoot low scores.
