Birdie on 17th, birdie on 18th.

With that finish, no one could threaten Jon Rahm in the US Open golf.

On his favorite track Torrey Pines outside San Diego, the 26-year-old Spaniard took his first major title - just a few weeks after he tested positive for covid-19 and in a big lead had to drop out of the PGA competition in Ohio.

- I believe a lot in karma.

After what happened a couple of weeks ago, I knew something big was going to happen.

I just did not know that it would be here, today, he says in the victory interview.

- That my parents could come here and that I could get out of the covid bubble early was important.

But what happened out there on the track?

I do not know, I was like in my own world, says Rahm, who is Spain's third major winner, after Ballesteros (five major titles) and Sergio García (US Masters 2017).

The challengers fell away

Behind Rahm, it was a dramatic end. Where Rahm played safely and did pair after pair, the challengers fell away at a fast pace and the battle for victory was - into the last hole - between Rahm and Louis Oosthuizen.


The South African had gone out in a split lead, and held it via stable play in 16 of Sunday's holes. But a bogey on the 17th forced him to an eagle on the closing hole to be able to reach special play. And it became too difficult a task.


It was just the culmination of a dramatic Sunday, where some hour into the closing day ten players were one stroke away from the lead. But then reality caught up with several of the challengers.

As reigning champion Bryson DeChambeau, who put rash after rash in the thick ruff and never got the necessary birdie chances.


Like four-time major winner Rory McIlroy, who tripped to a bogey on the eleven and on hole 12 had to make double bunker visits before it became a double bogey - followed by a new bogey on the 13th.

Hughes up in a tree

Or like the Canadian Mackenzie Hughes in the leader ball, who for the first time had a tight feeling in a major competition and will not forget the day for a long time.

At least not hole eleven, where the title hunt ended up in a tree.


His rash went far too far to the left, bouncing on the road - straight up into a tree where it lay in the branch.

A duty stroke and a missed putt later, Hughes was a lesser threat to the lead.


Or then - most importantly - Louis Oosthuizen.

When he in the 18th did not lower his input from just over 60 meters, the South African's sixth place in a major was a fact.

Proposed in the same place

For Rahm, the victory came on the same track where he took his first PGA victory in 2017 and in the same place where he proposed a few years ago to his then future wife Kelley Cahill - who now together with her newborn son Kepa got to see her husband take his biggest so far golf victory.


- They are the reason I won. And that it would only happen in such a beautiful place, in such an environment, I knew that, says Rahm.