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After nearly 3 months of putting away his golf club, Jon Rahm still proved his position by taking the lead at -26 after 54 holes with high professional performance at the Tournament of Champions of the PGA Tour.
Rahm watches his tee shot on the 11th hole of round three of the Tournament of Champions. Photo: AP
After nearly 3 months of putting away his golf club, Jon Rahm still proved his position by taking the lead at -26 after 54 holes with high professional performance at the Tournament of Champions of the PGA Tour.
The opening event on January 6 at the par-73 Plantation Course in Hawaii is open only to PGA Tour champions from the previous calendar year.
In the penultimate round yesterday, Rahm recorded 11 birdies and one eagle.
Rahm only had one bogey in the whole match. It was also his only bogey since the beginning of the tournament.
After birdie hole 18, he reached the Plantation 18-hole record - 61 strokes just set by Justin Thomas 90 minutes earlier.
Plantation has 15 fairways. Three rounds of statistics show Rahm hit 293.7 yards on two holes that are rated by the PGA Tour as average driving distance, hitting 40 of 45 fairways, reaching the green in par 50.
With a T1 position of -26, he and Cameron Smith are five strokes behind Daniel Berger - the closest rival - and are on track to break the championship record of -31 set by famous player Ernie Els in 2003. Smith recorded three eagles, 23 birdies, three bogeys over 54 holes.
Rahm has not played in nearly three months, after being cut for the second time in three tournaments, at the Andalucia Masters on the European Tour in his native Spain. He hung up his club in mid-October 2021 due to being overloaded after more than a year of a tight schedule. Since the PGA Tour resumed after the pandemic, from June 2020, Rahm has played in a total of 32 tournaments. During this journey, Rahm contracted Covid-19 twice, the most painful of which was testing positive and having to withdraw from the Memorial just when he was holding the top spot with a 54-hole lead of 6 strokes.
After quarantine, Rahm returned and won the US Open - his first major after five years as a professional, in addition to five PGA Tour titles and six European Tour Cups.
"I got Covid, my wife gave birth, won a major and then performed well at the Ryder Cup. But then I was exhausted after more than a year of playing tournaments. After the event in Spain, I felt I needed a break, not only for myself but also for my family," Rahm said before the Tournament of Champions.
In the last PGA Tour season, Rahm won the "Outstanding Player" award from the Professional Golfers Association of America, topping important statistics including average round, hole-handling efficiency and prize money - $7.7 million. To date, Rahm has finished in the top 10 55 times in 113 PGA Tour events with a total prize money of nearly $30 million.
According to VnExpress
