Behind the numbers: Jon Rahm

A transcendent talent, Jon Rahm had the looks of a future superstar within his first few months on campus at Arizona State.

Less than a decade later, as his now-famed fortune cookie tweet foretold, Rahm is a Masters champion, two-time major winner, and unquestioned number one player in the world.

Golf fans got to know and appreciate Rahm even more through his championship performance last week at Augusta National. With his victory, the Spaniard became the first player from Europe ever to win the U.S. Open and Masters in his career. Let’s dive more into the history he’s making and the key statistics that fuel his success.

Just how elite he is off the tee

Rahm’s power and accuracy off the tee is obvious to anyone watching him on the golf course. But just how good – and consistent – he has been with his driver as a professional is quite staggering.

Rahm has played six full seasons on the PGA TOUR. In each of those seasons – 2017 through 2022 – he has ranked in the top five in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee. Not only is he the only player on TOUR to rank in the top five in that stat in each of those seasons, only one other player has been in the top ten in each – Rory McIlroy. Rahm’s first professional start came in the summer of 2016 at the Quicken Loans Invitational. Since turning pro, Rahm is second in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee per round (+0.82), trailing only McIlroy in that span.

Rahm was excellent off the tee all week in his Masters win, ranking second in the field in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee. Rahm hit more than 85% of his fairways while averaging more than 295 yards off the tee, the first Masters champion to do that since stats were first tracked in detail forty years ago.

In exclusive company after latest comeback win

Rahm trailed by two strokes entering the final round Sunday afternoon at Augusta National. Entering the final round of his 2021 U.S. Open victory at Torrey Pines, he was three shots off the lead. With Sunday’s triumphant comeback to win the green jacket, Rahm joined an exclusive group of all-time great players to come from multiple shots back on Sunday to win both prestigious events.

Only three other players in history have come from multiple shots back through 54 holes to win both the U.S. Open and the Masters: Gene Sarazen (1922 U.S. Open, 1935 Masters), Byron Nelson (1937 Masters, 1939 U.S. Open), and Jack Nicklaus (1962 U.S. Open, 1986 Masters).

Rahm has been especially sharp in recent months when beginning a final round within striking distance of the lead. Since July of 2020, Rahm has been at or within three shots of the lead 19 times on the PGA and DP World Tours. He won nine of those tournaments, posting a final-round scoring average in those situations of 68.9.

Brilliant touch around the greens

At Augusta, Rahm got up-and-down 80% of the time, the best rate of any player in the field to make the cut. It was the highest scrambling percentage in the week of a Masters victory since 2008 when Trevor Immelman had a rate of 81%. For the Tournament, Rahm ranked sixth in the field in Strokes Gained: Around the Green, picking up more than three strokes on the field in that manner.

If there was one part of Rahm’s game he could have stood to improve on entering this season, it was his play around the greens. Rahm was 143rd on TOUR last season in Strokes Gained: Around the Green and 139th in scrambling percentage. Those weaknesses have turned into an undeniable strength now though, as he’s inside the top 20 in both of those stats in 2022-23.

Continued long iron improvement

One common thread among the legends in any sport is their constant search for improvement within their own games. One facet Rahm has gone from good to elite in is when he has one of his longer irons in his hands.

In his first three full seasons on TOUR, 2017-19, Rahm ranked 25th in average proximity to the hole from the fairway when 200 or more yards away. That was plenty strong – and good enough for him to have an average score of more than one-quarter of a stroke under par in those situations. But year by year, Rahm has made his irons even sharper.

Rahm got a foot better, on average, in the next three seasons when in those situations, getting up to ninth in the TOUR ranking. This season, he’s hit an entirely different gear: he’s averaging 44 feet, 7 inches from the hole in those situations, about ten feet better than the TOUR average. He also has a sparkling average score to par of -0.44 per instance when faced with an approach shot of that range.

Historic birdie average this season

There’s plenty of golf left to be played in the 2022-23 PGA TOUR season, but Rahm is currently making birdies at a rate never before seen so far in his four-win campaign. Not only does Rahm lead the TOUR in birdie average, but his clip of 5.15 per round would also be the highest single-season rate of all-time should it persist through the TOUR Championship.

Since 1980, when statistics were first tracked, the best single-season birdie average on TOUR is 4.92 by Tiger Woods in his incredible year 2000.

Just one more legendary number for Rahm to go after in 2023.