Some golfers put themselves in position and wait for the trophy to fall to them. Others, like Jon Rahm, go out and grab it. Then-leader Louis Oosthuizen was still on the course at Torrey Pines when Rahm rolled in birdie putts on the 71st and 72nd holes to win the 121st U.S. Open. The sequence was clutch as clutch comes.
Let’s break down the putts.
The first was a 24-footer on the par-4 17th hole. But it wasn’t the length that was the issue, it was the huge break Rahm had to navigate. His start line was almost exactly perpendicular from the point it entered the hole.
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And then, greenside in two on the par-5 18th hole, Rahm played a safe bunker shot to 18 feet past the hole and once again, navigated a sizable left-to-right putt when it mattered most.
That putt moved Rahm to six under for the championship and applied serious pressure on to Oosthuizen who was at five under with two holes to play. When Oosthuizen closed bogey-birdie, Rahm had his first major title.
Luke Kerr-Dineen is the Game Improvement Editor at GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. In his role he oversees the brand’s game improvement content spanning instruction, equipment, health and fitness, across all of GOLF’s multimedia platforms.
An alumni of the International Junior Golf Academy and the University of South Carolina–Beaufort golf team, where he helped them to No. 1 in the national NAIA rankings, Luke moved to New York in 2012 to pursue his Masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University. His work has also appeared in USA Today, Golf Digest, Newsweek and The Daily Beast.