“I asked him…”: Jon Rahm reveals his conversation with Golf legend Tiger Woods
Jon Rahm certainly appears to be at the absolute top of his game right now. He's winning left and right and has stormed the top of the OWGR leaderboard, usurping both Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy in the process.
Despite that, he doesn't feel like he's firing on all cylinders. In fact, that's only happened once before.
Rahm admitted via Golf Monthly:
“The one time I can say I was firing on all cylinders I didn't get to finish the tournament. So I would have wished to see what that was like."
Rahm feels like he has only been on top of his game once and nothing came of it. He also mentioned that he had spoken to Tiger Woods about the same thing.
“The thing is, you don't need to be firing on all cylinders to win. I actually had a conversation similar to this with Tiger. I asked him, out of the 82 wins on the PGA Tour, I didn't get into the other ones, how many times do you think you played your best all four days? And he said, three at most. Right? A lot of those Sundays he played his best, but the whole week, very few.”
Despite Woods being perhaps the best golfer of all time, he has also rarely ever been at the top of his game. Only a few times throughout his illustrious career did Woods feel like he was playing flawlessly.
Jon Rahm admits that he has too high standards
Jon Rahm and Tiger Woods are too hard on themselves. Perhaps they feel like they should do what they can't do and thus detract from themselves. The world's number one golfer also said:
”A lot of us are such perfectionists that I think we play close to that A-plus game a lot, but we don't give ourselves that, quite that grade for all four days. I think a lot of us probably, you know, that's why probably Tiger said maybe just a few times in his career.”
Rahm did say he didn't think it was possible for every aspect of one's game to be firing on all cylinders at all times:
“The best I've had tee to green feeling-wise was 2017 at Torrey Pines. But I didn't have the week on the greens until the back nine on Sunday. There's weeks where you think, Oh, this part of my game is great, this other part was amazing. But for every part of your game to be a hundred percent all four days, yeah, that's nearly impossible to happen."
If this kind of form is not firing on all cylinders for Rahm, that's scary for the rest of the golf world. He's stormed the PGA Tour this season, winning and placing well every single time he goes out.
He's ascended to the top ranking, but even that doesn't feel like it's true to how well he's playing. Still, this is not the peak of Jon Rahm. That's how wildly good he is.