Jon Rahm feels the heat at Augusta Masters 2023 as Spaniard suffers a difficult start at the tournament
Jon Rahm is in the midst of an impressive stretch of winning. To start the PGA Tour season this year, he was as good as he's ever been and as good as anyone in the world right now. He rose to world number one for a brief while.
Coming into the Masters in 2023, many expected him to compete well. That has simply not been the case on day one of the major. He four-putted the first hole of the tournament to get off to an unbelievably inauspicious start.
We spend all this time analyzing strokes gained data and trends and what not…and then Augusta happens. Jon Rahm four-putts his first hole of the Masters for double bogey. Game wouldn’t be so fun to watch if it was predictable.
It was a poor start, though he's rectified it a bit already. He can likely ill afford anymore setbacks, though, as he's going to have to continue playing very well for all four days to get to the final hole with a shot at victory.
Rahm entered the tournament with the third-best odds of winning it all:
- Scottie Scheffler +650
- Rory McIlroy +750
- Jon Rahm +800
- Cameron Smith +1400
- Jordan Spieth +1400
- Justin Thomas +1500
- Will Zalatoris +1600
- Collin Morikawa +1600
- Max Homa +1600
- Xander Schauffele +2000
- Patrick Cantlay +2000
- Sam Burns +2500
- Jason Day +2500
- Tony Finau +2800
- Sungjae Im +2800
- Dustin Johnson +2800
- Viktor Hovland +2800
- Cameron Young +3000
- Brooks Koepka +3000
- Joohyung (Tom) Kim +3300
- Hideki Matsuyama +3500
- Matthew Fitzpatrick +3500
- Joaquin Niemann +4000
Rahm is going to have to turn things around to have a chance at doing so. He began at about eight-to-one to win it all and has plummeted to 20-to-one with current odds.
Can Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler be the next big three?
Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and Scottie Scheffler are in the midst of incredible runs. They're playing as well as they ever have. The only reason each one of them isn't the runaway best player in the world is because of the other two.
They're being compared to Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh as the new "big three". Rahm responded to that via the Star Tribune:
"I would say you can say that if we can do it for at least five, or five-plus, years, like so many of those players did. Even when Tiger was on his run in the 2000s, Phil and Vijay [Singh] still managed to win [many] times themselves in that time frame. So I think for us to be compared to something like that, we have a very long way to go. This could be the start. But still a long way to go."
Scheffler, who is chasing some history himself, added:
"Legacy is not really why I play. Any time you can get mentioned in the same breath as a Tiger and a Jack and a Nick Faldo is really special, but it's not a motivating factor for me to come out here and play. Legacy is just a complicated thing. In a hundred years I'm going to be forgotten and it's not a big deal."
Can one of those three take home a green jacket this year?