Jon Rahm rallied from seven shots down to win the Tournament of Champions
in Hawaii, the first tournament of the PGA Tour season reserved only for the 2022 champions and the top 30 FedEx Cup qualifiers.
The Spaniard
culminated a historic feat thanks to an immense card of ten shots under par for the field (63 shots)
and beat the American
Collin Morikawa with two ahead of him,
who starred in an anthological disaster caused by the pressure and
birdies
of the Spanish player .
Bad start
At the beginning of Sunday nothing boded such a turnaround in the standings, especially when
Rahm started the day with a
bogey
and minutes later Morikawa signed the
birdie
on the same hole
.
Rahm had to come back 9 strokes with 17 holes to go and ahead of him a solid leader who had made no mistakes all week.
"If they told me that after the
bogey
of one I'm going to end up winning by two strokes, I would never have believed it. I just didn't want to think and I kept working and trying to make
birdies
," Jon Rahm revealed after winning the tournament.
No sooner said than done.
Rahm would accumulate a -11 in those 17 holes to take his most epic victory
From him.
Rahm reacted quickly to this
initial
bogey with a
birdie
on hole 2, with a good
putt
of about four meters, another solid
birdie
on hole 4 from six meters and the option of an
eagle
on hole 5 from two meters that was escaping.
He would get the
birdie
on the 6th hole and
close the nine cousins subtracting another shot on the nine, par five, for a partial of -4
.
Morikawa continued to do his thing with three
birdies
in the first six holes, although no one was going to suspect that the sixth hole would be his last
birdie
from him.
Morikawa Debacle
Rahmbo
's attack
intensified in the second nine holes with
birdies
on holes 12, 13, 14 and a decisive
eagle
on hole 15. The
driver
was key to achieving that definitive streak for the Spaniard, Rahm burst the ball around the spot with a 409-yard
drive
on the 12th hole, on the 15th he hit more than 355 yards and his accurate second shot left the ball just over three meters away, the
eagle
completely dynamited the tournament.
Behind, Morikawa signed his first
bogey
all week on the 14th hole after a shot from the bunker.
Another error with a heavy
approach
on the 15th put him in trouble again:
bogey
, the second of the week and the second in a row, also signed on the most accessible hole, not only on the Plantation Course, but probably of the entire season of the PGA Tour.
The pressure caused the collapse of what seemed infallible Morikawa, who ended the disaster with the third
bogey
in the 16th. No one signed three
consecutive
bogeys
all week .
Rahm just had to manage the situation and with a
birdie
on the 18th he rounded off a historic Sunday and a victory in a tournament that he resisted.
It is the sixth time that the Spaniard has contested this event and where he had achieved two second places.
This victory
marks the eighth in the player's career on the PGA Tour and a total of 17 counting his victories in Europe
, Rahm also pockets the check for 2.7 million dollars and rises to number 4 in the world ranking, where he finally
Scottie Scheffler
failed to reach number one.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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