Quite simply, it was the wildest and most condensed 12-month period in the history of men’s major championship golf.
When Collin Morikawa tapped in the winning putt at the British Open, it brought to an end the wildest and most condensed 12-month period in the history of men’s major championship golf.
With the British open canceled in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the three others majors rescheduled for later in the year, the top players in the world were faced with seven major championships starting last August and ending Sunday at Royal St. George’s in England.
Some of the majors came off brilliantly, others struggled to find just the right feel in a new time period. Players were lost from some majors because of COVID-19, while other majors found just the right mix to produce a great week.
Here’s a list of the five best moments from the remarkable and busy 12-month major blitz in men’s golf:
“Even under pressure, I’m performing well. I can’t wait to play another tournament.”
SAN DIEGO – Italy’s Guido Migliozzi had a week to remember at the 121st U.S. Open. Playing in his first major championship, he shot a final-round 3-under 68 and finished tied for fourth. That was good enough to earn a return trip to the U.S. Open in 2022, qualify for the Olympics in July as well as an invitation to the Masters in April.
When asked what he took from the week, he said, “I take everything. It’s been a wonderful week.”
Indeed, it was. Migliozzi qualified for the U.S. Open after finishing among the top-10 points leaders not previously exempt from a three-event European Tour series. He virtually guaranteed his spot in that top 10 with a playoff defeat to Richard Bland in the Betfred British Masters.
Migliozzi, 24, fired rounds of 71-70-73 and saved his best for last on Sunday. He made five birdies, including one on 18 to finish at 2-under 286, tied with Brooks Koepka.
“Starting the week, I was thinking I have only one chance to win my first major,” he said. “It was a tough thing, but I take my position, and I play it really solid today. My thinking today in the morning was to be able to give me a chance to get into the top 10. So I’m very happy about the score today.”
He was tied for ninth when he finished his round, but several players faltered on the closing stretch. The top-4 finishers at the majors automatically qualify for the Masters, meaning Migliozzi can book his trip for Augusta National in April.
But wait, there’s more. He improved to a career-best No. 72 in the world and qualified to represent Italy in the Olympics, too.
“I grew up watching the Olympics on TV. To be able to play in an Olympics game is a dream come true,” he said. “It will be another monster week. A lot of feelings, a lot of vibes, can’t wait.”
And in addition to taking home close to a cool $500K, there’s one more immediate bonus for his performance: Migliozzi’s result extended his PGA Tour stay. He earned a berth in this week’s Travelers Championship in Hartford via the category for top-10 finishers at the previous event.
“My game is in a good spot, and I’m really happy. Even under pressure, I’m performing well,” he said. “I can’t wait to play another tournament.”
Note to Migliozzi, who was photographed celebrating with pizza after making the cut at the U.S. Open on Friday: some of America’s finest ‘za is just down the road from Hartford in New Haven, Connecticut. Don’t miss out on determining whether you’re a Sally’s or Pepe’s guy.
Jon Rahm is a big believer in karma. “It felt like such a fairy tale story that I knew it was going to have a happy ending. I could just tell,” he said.
SAN DIEGO – Jon Rahm is a big believer in karma.
Fifteen days after he was informed that he had tested positive and had to withdraw from the PGA Tour’s Memorial Tournament despite holding a commanding six-stroke lead, the 26-year-old Spaniard sensed that the 121st U.S. Open at Torrey Pines belonged to him.
“It felt like such a fairy tale story that I knew it was going to have a happy ending. I could just tell, just going down the fairway after that first tee shot, that second shot, and that birdie, I knew there was something special in the air. I could just feel it. I just knew it,” he said. “It was like, man, this is my day; everything’s going to go right. I felt like that helped me become. I just knew that I could do it and believed it.”
Rahm woke up to crows on a cool overcast Father’s Day morning, his first time celebrating the occasion as a father, and poured himself a cup of coffee and pulled up a Call of Duty tournament from the night before featuring a team he follows, OpTic Chicago, and settled in to watch the 90-minute competition. Wife Kelley had noticed that he had been nervous the day before – which for Rahm means being quiet – but today she sensed a new-found calm on what would be a chaotic final round at the U.S. Open.
“I told my dad this is going to be really good or really bad,” Kelley said.
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Big things have been expected for Rahm for some time. He grew up in the Basque coastal town of Barrika, Spain, population 1,500, and met the great Seve Ballesteros just once before Seve died. Rahm was around 12 years old at a prize-giving ceremony. Two-time Masters champion Jose Maria Olazabal was there too.
“I knew who Olazábal was,” Rahm recalled. “I had no idea who Seve was and I shook Olazabal’s hand and I almost missed Seve. And my dad almost had a heart attack because I had the chance to shake Seve’s hand and I almost didn’t. I have that memory. I never got to meet him again, never got to speak to him again.”
Jon Rahm has Phil Mickelson after winning the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines Golf Course. (Photo: Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports)
But whether he knows it or not, Rahm has been compared with Seve ever since and chasing his records to be known as the greatest Spanish golfer. Rahm arrived in the U.S. in 2012 when then-Arizona State University men’s golf coach looked at Rahm’s position in the World Amateur Golf Ranking and sent him an e-mail offering a scholarship to play golf sight unseen. The next day Rahm accepted. He had never been to the United States, barely spoke English and he was not sure if college golf was for him. But he learned to speak fluently by repeating the lyrics to rap songs by Eminem and Kendrick Lamar. Rahm’s coach provided the necessary motivation, enforcing a stiff penalty of a burpee for every Spanish word Rahm uttered. His golf game? That translated in any language.
“His golf game was very refined from the first day he came to campus,” Tim Mickelson said.
At Arizona State, Rahm met Kelley, a javelin thrower on the track-and-field team, at a Halloween party her freshman year. She was dressed as an NFL replacement referee with a blindfold and walking cane, he as a SWAT officer, and she thought she was on a bathroom line, but it turned out to be a drink line. They began talking. Well, she did.
“I’m just going on and on and on and thinking he was the best listener ever,” she said.
Rahm kept a promise to his parents and stayed four years and graduated and wasted little time making his mark in the pro ranks. TaylorMade executive Keith Sbararo tells the story about how the first time he watched Rahm play he called Golf Channel analyst Tripp Isenhour and said he’d just met the sixth-best player in the world, and he still was an amateur.
“I may have sold Jon short when I said he was the sixth-best player in the world,” said Sbarbaro, who eventually signed Rahm to an endorsement deal.
Count Phil Mickelson among those who recognized raw talent when he saw it. He famously won a bet from fellow Tour pro Colt Knost, who gave Mickelson 2-to-1 odds that Rahm would reach the top 10 within a year of turning pro. Rahm did just that by May 2017.
“I can neither confirm nor deny that,” Tim Mickelson said of the wager with a smirk, “but I can tell you that neither of us would ever bet against Jon.”
Even before Rahm turned pro and notched his first PGA Tour title in dramatic fashion at the 2017 Farmers Insurance Open, Rahm and his wife have loved Torrey Pines and the surrounding area, which he said reminds him of home – from the coastline to the blue skies and temperate weather. He proposed to Kelley at Torrey Pines Reserve Park during a hike and they were married in nearby Del Mar. “I think it’s something that really just resonates with me,” he said, adding “I love Torrey and Torrey loves me.”
When Rahm reached World No. 1 last year, the expectations to win a major grew. All that seemingly was holding him back was his fiery temper. Rahm’s outbursts – from slamming clubs to smashing tee markers to foul language – have been well documented. Still, Tim Mickelson said he’s misunderstood by the public and his wife agreed.
“It’s very upsetting. People mistake his passion for anger. They want to see the highs but they don’t want to see the lows,” she said. “He’s tried before to be, you know, happy all the time and not show emotion but it just doesn’t work for him.”
Phil Mickelson called Rahm “a gentle giant,” and said, “he’s got the kindest heart, and yet he has a great fire and passion to the game.”
“He’s actually terribly shy off the golf course,” Kelley said. “At home, he only likes to go out to one restaurant because he only like to go where he knows the waiters and he knows where he’s going to sit.”
Shy off the course, but once his competitive juices start flowing, she said, “get him on the golf course and he wants to step on people’s necks.”
Jon Rahm and his family celebrate with the trophy after winning he U.S. Open golf tournament at Torrey Pines Golf Course. Mandatory Credit: Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports
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The general consensus was that despite 12 victories heading into the U.S. Open – six on the PGA Tour and six on the European Tour – if Rahm could only learn to mask his emotions better and accept failure, his record would be even better. Rahm tried, but he always fell back on the excuse that getting mad helped him win tournaments. His caddie, Adam Hayes, feared he was trying too hard to act mature. Then along came Kepa in April. The proud new papa radiated joy when he arrived at the Masters, but that only lasted until he made his first bogey. During the third round of the PGA Championship, he behaved unprofessionally. His latest Mount Vesuvius eruption proved to be an A-ha-moment.
“I know I can perform at my best without showing my frustration so much. I made that deal with myself after the third round of the PGA. I wasn’t happy with how I ended, and I could have handled it better, and I vowed to myself to be a better role model for my son,” he said.
Kelley concedes it’s a cliché but she says the birth of their son changed Rahm for the better. When he tested positive for COVID-19 on June 5, he handled the situation with grace and said all the right things at his pre-U.S. Open press conference. It was the most telling sign that he could maintain his composure at the most mentally-taxing championship. Rahm also benefited from calls from European Ryder Cup captain Padraig Harrington who recounted how much like Rahm at the Memorial he was leading a tournament by five strokes after 54 holes when he was disqualified for signing the wrong scorecard. Harrington’s message: “He learned a lot more than he would ever learn from the win,” Rahm said.
Nick Faldo texted a similar story and emphasized how he had won the very next week. Rahm thought of those stories on Sunday as he faced a leaderboard with Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Louis Oosthuizen, Collin Morikawa, all major winners to boot. He tried to keep his head down and go about his own business, but the fans, who seemed to be in his corner all week, perhaps feeling he was owed one after the strange circumstances at the Memorial, kept telling him about the wild fluctuations on Sunday.
“I decided to embrace it. You see all those great names, and to myself I thought whoever wins this one is going to be the one who won a U.S. Open with a star-packed leaderboard,” he said.
Let’s not forget that Rahm is a believer in karma and he kept telling anyone who would listen that “something good is going to come. I don’t know what, but something good is going to come, and I felt it today out there on the golf course,” he said. “I just had to be close. I knew I could get it done.”
He got a grip on his temper in time to win the U.S. Open on the course he loves and reclaimed the No. 1 spot in the Official World Golf Ranking. He did so with two unforgettable putts. The first was a 25-foot putt at 17 to tie for the lead. None of this surprised his father, Edorta, who had been here in 2017 to see his son win for the first time and had arrived only a week earlier after not having seen his son for more than a year due to COVID. He recalled seeing his son make hundreds of putts as a kid at home in Spain always to win a major. Of the winning 18-foot left-to-right bending putt at the final hole, Rahm recalled how Lee Westwood had missed a similar putt to tie Rocco Mediate at the 2008 U.S. Open and aimed 3-4 feet to left.
“As soon as I made contact, I looked up and saw where the ball was going. It was exactly the speed and line I visualized, and I told myself, that’s in,” he said. “If you could see my thoughts with 10 feet to go, in my mind, I’m like that’s in the hole, and it went in.”
No Spaniard, not even Seve, had ever won the U.S. Open, just as no one had ever birdied the last two holes to win the U.S. Open by one shot until Rahm.
“He’s won two tournaments in a row. I don’t care what anyone says. He had that title [at the Memorial],” Rory McIlroy said. “It was unfortunate. Mentally, I think you have to be in a good place to bounce back from something like that. Obviously, he knew his game was there. He just had to go out and play the way he knows he can.
“And he’s obviously had success here at this golf course. I don’t think there’s a golf course where he can’t have success on. He’s that good of a player. He was a major champion in waiting. It was just a matter of time.”
Or as Rahm put it, the stars were aligned.
“It almost feels like it’s a movie that’s about to end and I’m going to wake up soon,” he said.
When he does, his name will be engraved on the silver trophy and he’ll have quite the story to tell Kepa some day.
“It’s frustrating in the moment when it’s happening, but afterwards for me now, I don’t really care as much. I’ve already won it.”
SAN DIEGO – Bryson DeChambeau understands math, probabilities and playing the odds. He has fully committed himself to a strategy that he thinks will give him the best chance of making more birdies and winning more tournaments.
It’s unconventional, and to some, foolish, but he’s gone all-in. DeChambeau has transformed his body, added speed, and he uses his power to take lines on the course that no one else tries. He goes for angles that outwardly seem audacious both off the tee and from the fairway.
When things go well, he looks like a card shark at the blackjack table. Miraculously, everything goes his way. That’s what happened last year at Winged Foot when he won the U.S. Open by six and was the only player to finish under par.
On Sunday at Torrey Pines, the breaks stopped going DeChambeau’s way—in his eyes—and a back-nine 44 dropped him from the top of the leaderboard with 10 holes to play at Torrey Pines into a tie for 26th at the end of the day.
His final score for the day, 77. In golf slang, hockey sticks.
The defense mechanisms and rationalizations of his round followed shortly after DeChambeau signed his card. He said that he had struggled to hit the ball well all week at Torrey Pines, but today, on the back nine, that poor ball-striking combined with bad luck.
“Nobody understands, at least if you play professional golf, major championship golf—a lot of it is luck,” DeChambeau said flatly in his brief post-round press conference.
DeChambeau talks about luck dispassionately, at least outwardly giving the impression that random things like hitting into divots or drawing a bad lie are things he does not worry about. Sports psychologists call it being process-oriented instead of result-oriented.
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The gamble DeChambeau knowingly accepts is that if he hits massive tee shots and takes fairway bunkers and turns in the fairways out of play, he can attack the hole locations from the fairway. When he misses the fairway, the combination of his physical strength and longer short-irons can help him hit the ball out of the rough and into the middle of greens. From there, his goal is to get the ball into the hole in two putts or fewer.
“I knew going into the week that was going to be my game plan,” DeChambeau said of his aggressive approach. “(I) had to be a little lucky, and I was for the first three and a half days and just didn’t get lucky on the last nine. But it plays a huge factor in major championship golf. It’s probably over 50 percent in most scenarios. There are times when I hit it in fairways and hit it into a divot. It’s just part of it.”
After nearly making a hole-in-one on the 175-yard par-3 eighth hole, DeChambeau tapped in for a birdie, reached 5 under and, according to algorithms used to predict win probabilities, had a 33 percent chance of retaining his crown.
Not long after that, it fell apart.
His tee shot went right on the 11th, leading to a dropped shot, and then on the 12th, his fairway wood off the tee went wide right again. His recovery shot found the front of the green, but his putt raced 12 feet by the cup, leading to another bogey. Suddenly, he was three shots behind Louis Oosthuizen.
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The wheels came off on the 13th hole. DeChambeau’s right foot slipped while he was hitting his tee shot, then he could only advance the ball 145 yards out of the thick rough. His third shot, again from the right rough, went into a greenside bunker, and from there, he hit over the putting surface (and the crowd) and his ball came to rest next to a cardboard beer box. A pitch and two putts gave DeChambeau a seven on the hole and dropped him from contention.
Walking to the 14th green, DeChambeau’s win probability was down to 0.4 percent, and his score had dropped to 1 under for the tournament.
Oh yeah, to add insult to injury, a fan ran on the hole behind DeChambeau in the 13th fairway, dropped a couple of balls and hit two shots before being detained by the police.
Athletes need to have selective memories. Draw confidence from past successes, but don’t dwell on mistakes and loses. DeChambeau gave the impression that his crash on the back-nine Sunday was already processed before he headed to his rental car. He had already run the numbers through his mind and accepted the outcome.
“It’s frustrating in the moment when it’s happening, but afterwards for me now, I don’t really care as much,” DeChambeau said. “I’ve already won it.”
Rahm will take home a whopping $2.25 million for the win.
It pays to play well in major championships, folks. Just ask this week’s winner, Jon Rahm.
It was a storybook day for Rahm as the 26-year-old Spaniard won the 121st U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in San Diego on Sunday evening, claiming his first major title at the same place he proposed to his wife and earned his first PGA Tour victory. Rahm made clutch birdies from 25 feet and 18 feet on his final two holes to take the clubhouse lead at 6 under and ultimately defeat 54-hole co-leader Louis Oosthuizen by one.
Here’s how much money each player earned this week at the U.S. Open.
It turns out Jon Rahm has the temperament to win a major championship.
SAN DIEGO – It turns out Jon Rahm has the temperament to win a major championship.
The fiery Spaniard canned a 25-foot birdie at 17 and an 18-foot birdie at the last to claim the lead and close in 4-under 67 to edge Louis Oosthuizen by one stroke at the 121st U.S. Open. Rahm punctuated the moment with an uppercut fist pump.
At one point, on the front nine, there were five players tied for the lead and five players one stroke behind. Among the star-studded leaderboard were Rory McIlroy, who was chasing his fifth major and first since 2014, Bryson DeChambeau trying to defend his title, Brooks Koepka attempting to win his third U.S. Open in a five-year span, and Collin Morikawa, who was trying to become the fifth American player since World War II to capture multiple major champions before age 28.
Rahm, the World No. 3, delivered his first major title just 15 days after he tested positive for COVID-19 and was forced to withdraw from the Memorial Tournament ahead of the final round despite a commanding six-stroke lead. He took the news hard initially, but accepted the decision and was cleared to play in the major after spending time in self-quarantine. But it didn’t come without consequences: Rahm missed being present when his parents arrived from Spain and met his son, Kepa, born in April, for the first time.
Rahm, 26, reached World No. 1 in 2019, and the question long has been when, not if, he would win a major. All that has seemingly held him back is a temper that always seems on the verge of self-combustion. When asked on Friday how he managed to keep his composure at the most mentally-taxing championship, he snapped: “Am I ever going to escape that question?”
“He is a gentle giant,” said Phil Mickelson, who has served as a mentor to Rahm. “He’s got the kindest heart, and yet he has a great fire and passion to the game.”
Rahm opened with rounds of 69-70-72 and trailed the three 54-hole co-leaders – Russell Henley, Mackenzie Hughes and Oosthuizen – by three strokes heading into the final round. Needing to make a Sunday charge, Rahm came raging out of the gate like a bull, making birdies at the first two holes and survived a couple of loose tee shots at the third and fourth, which led to his lone bogey of the day, and the ninth, which thanks to a free drop he converted into a birdie to join the trophy hunt.
As others faltered, including DeChambeau who held a one-stroke lead with nine holes to go only to shoot 77 and finish nine strokes off the pace, Rahm played steady golf. He kept his composure and reeled off seven straight pars before his dramatic birdie-birdie finish to match the low round of the week and finish at 6-under-par 278.
Oosthuizen, who won the 2010 British Open, finished second for the sixth time at a major and the second consecutive major in a row, having finished second to Phil Mickelson at the PGA Championship last month. A bogey at the 17th hole after pulling his drive into a penalty area meant Oosthuizen needed to make eagle on the 72nd hole and he managed only a birdie. But it was Rahm’s week in the city that always has been good to him, including when he dropped to one knee and asked his wife, Kelley, to marry him during a hike at nearby Torrey Pines Reserve Park.
Rahm, who became the first Spaniard to win a U.S. Open, walked off the 72nd green and hugged his wife and held his son. It capped off a first Father’s Day he’ll never forget.
“You have no idea what this means right now,” he said to Kepa. “You will soon enough.”
“Get in the hole!” and “Brooksie!” are chants you expect to hear at golf tournaments these days, but you don’t expect to hear “shake that tree!”
For Sunday at the 121st U.S. Open it was par for the course.
On a day where 10 players were at one point within a shot of or tied for the lead, things got wacky when contender Mackenzie Hughes hit his ball into a tree on the par-3 11th.
Sitting T-2 at 4 under and two shots behind leader Louis Oosthuizen, Hughes hit a wayward shot left of the 11th green that hit the cart path and then jumped into the tree. His ball somehow nestled between two twigs on a branch.
Check out the gear U.S. Open contenders like Mackenzie Hughes, Russell Henley, Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau are using.
SAN DIEGO — Heading into the final round of the 121st U.S. Open, there were eight golfers who were either in the lead or within three shots of the lead. Three were past major champions and five had yet to win a major title. All of them were going to feel the pressure of the toughest tournament in golf.
To help them handle that pressure, each golfer had to trust his swing and his equipment. Sunday at the U.S. Open is no time to second guess your gear.
Below is a complete list of the golf equipment Mackenzie Hughes, Russell Henley, Louis Oosthuizen, Rory McIlroy, Bryson DeChambeau, Scottie Scheffeler, Jon Rahm and Matthew Wolff had in their bag Sunday at Torrey Pines.
SAN DIEGO – It lacked the fist-pumping reaction of Tiger Woods, but everything else about Mackenzie Hughes’ 63-foot eagle bomb at the par-5 13th was shades of Tiger on Saturday at the 2008 U.S. Open.
“I know Tiger was further right (in 2008), this putt was going right to left…the charge through your body when the ball goes into the hole and the crowd goes wild is kind of why we play,” Hughes told NBC’s Steve Sands after the round. “I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about it.”
That wasn’t the only goosebump-inducing moment for Hughes. The 30-year-old Canadian rode a back-nine 32 at Torrey Pines’ South Course to a share of the 54-hole U.S. Open lead with Russell Henley and Louis Oosthuizen. Hughes has missed the cut in six of his eight previous appearances in majors and has never finished better than T-40. Doesn’t matter – he’s got a tee time in the final group on Sunday at the 121st U.S. Open.
“You get goosebumps thinking about it, so I know I’m going to be nervous tomorrow,” he said. “I essentially played today around the lead all day. I think I was only ever a few back the entire day, so it felt – I think it’ll feel different tomorrow being in that last group, but you do the same things. You mentally tell yourself the same things, and I’ll be referencing my yardage book and my notes a lot. But yeah, I’m going to try and enjoy it lots, and yeah, embrace the moment.”
Hughes has one victory to his credit on the PGA Tour, and enjoyed his best season in 2019 when he finished in the top-30 in the FedEx Cup standings. His recent form has paled in comparison. He entered the week having missed his last five cuts.
“You kind of wonder when you’re going to get it back on track, going the right way, and so I got to Saturday, today, and just felt like, OK, the hard work is kind of done for me. I’m going to go have some fun and play golf.”
What else does he attribute his turnaround to this week? He moved his ball position forward and started hitting predominantly a cut. That and a couple of mental keys that he didn’t care to divulge have righted the ship and lifted his spirits.
“It’s really easy to get down and to be negative and to pout and feel bad for yourself, but I’ve been trying to do the hard thing, which is to be positive, glass half full, optimistic, looking for the progress, and that’s kind of a little bit what I’ve been working on,” he said.
It has finally paid dividends this week. Hughes signed for a 3-under 68 after getting up-and-down for birdie from a greenside bunker on the par-5 18th.
Is there any better slump-buster than winning a major? On Sunday, Hughes will have the chance of a lifetime.
Everything you need to know for the final round of the U.S. Open.
By the time the third round of the U.S. Open was over on Saturday evening, the top of the leaderboard was quite crowded. Mackenzie Hughes and Louis Oosthiuzen both caught second-round co-leader Russell Henley and all three will take a share of the lead at 5 under into the final round at Torrey Pines.
As for Richard Bland, the 48-year-old journeyman who was the story of the second round? He’ll have his work cut out for him on Sunday after firing a third-round 77 to drop to T-21 at 1 over.
The cast of characters near the top is certainly intriguing, even past the three co-leaders. It includes Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau two shots back plus Matthew Wolff and Jon Rahm another shot behind that.
From tee times to TV and streaming info, here’s what you need to know for the final round of the U.S. Open. All times listed are ET.
