So what will it take for the top players to walk away from this year feeling they were successful? They tell Michael Collins in their own words.
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Jon Rahm comes from behind with a 66-64 weekend, then makes a crazy, trans-continental putt to beat Dustin Johnson in a playoff and win the BMW Championship at vexing Olympia Fields. It's the second victory in six weeks for Rahm, who overcame a bizarre Rules gaffe in the third round. He vaulted to second in the FedExCup heading into this week's TOUR Championship to decide it all, and after his recent victory at the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide becomes the one to watch on really hard golf courses. Welcome to the Monday Finish. THREE KEYS TO SUCCESS 1. He made a great bogey. Rahm's biggest hiccup of the weekend was when he picked up his ball before marking it on the fifth hole of his third round Saturday, incurring a one-stroke penalty. It was a rare brain-cramp, but he made his 6-footer for bogey and didn't look back. "I don’t know if I would have won had it not happened," he said. "It kind of made me mad at myself, and I just went on with my focus after that and was able to play amazing golf and stayed aggressive. ... I can tell you after that two-putt, making that 6-footer for bogey, I was like, OK, that’s it, no playing around, go. That’s kind of what mentally did it for me." In the past, Rahm might have blown his top at making such a mental error. Not this time. For more on Rahm's win, click here. 2. He didn't let the course win. No one told Olympia Fields this wasn't the 2003 U.S. Open. Only five players - Rahm (64), Dustin Johnson (67), Joaquin Niemann (67, T3), Hideki Matsuyama (69, T3) and Tony Finau (65, solo fourth) - finished the tournament under par. Jason Day, who had been on a hot streak, finished 14 over, while countryman Marc Leishman finished 30 over. Rahm, though, likes it hard; six weeks earlier, he had tamed a similarly difficult but windier Muirfield Village course to win the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide. "The way I played today was so solid," Rahm said. "I only missed two fairways in 18 holes, hitting mostly drivers. Only missed actually one green in 19 holes that I played today, gave myself plenty of chances, never really stressed for pars. "This round was about as well as I think it could have gone," he added. "Probably overall as a weekend, I think this one might have been a little bit better (than the Memorial)." 3. He waited for his A game. After a 5-over 75 in the first round Rahm was eight behind first-round leader Hideki Matsuyama, and he was still seven behind 36-hole leaders Patrick Cantlay and Rory McIlroy after a second-round 71. It wasn't until Rahm's third-round 66, which got him back to 2 over, that he looked like he might have a shot at winning. "Thursday I really struggled off the tee, never got comfortable really with any part of my game," he said. "Friday I was playing pretty similar. Let’s just say for people that don’t know, Thursday and Friday played significantly more difficult than the weekend did. I mean, those greens were really firm, fast and the wind was blowing a lot harder than it did the last two days ... "It is true," he added, "after Friday I went to the range and figured some things out, just got comfortable. I knew it wasn’t too far away, slowly got better each day, figured it out, came out on Saturday and played really good golf and just kept it going today." OBSERVATIONS Johnson keeps sense of humor Two crazy putts took center stage in deciding the BMW. The first one kept Dustin Johnson in it for potential back-to-back victories, and the second denied him in the playoff. DJ's final stroke of regulation was zany enough - a downhill, double-breaking, do-or-die birdie putt of 43 feet that clanked the pin and dropped. It was the shot of the tournament for only about a half hour, because then came an even crazier shot - Rahm's 66-footer, also downhill and also double-breaking, in the playoff, ending things after one extra hole. "Yeah, I mean, I was just laughing kind of," Johnson said. "I was kind of laughing at my putt, too, because it was one of those where you - you’re not really thinking you’re going to make it. But gave it a good roll, and obviously I did make it." Johnson gave a wry smile at seeing Rahm make an even longer putt from a similar line. "My hope was to get myself somewhat of a doable uphill putt," Rahm said, "somewhere hopefully within three feet, but that was extremely difficult, so three to six feet. I was just kind of hoping to give myself that type of a chance." He obviously did a lot better than that. Niemann breaks mini-slump Rahm wasn't the only one who had a great weekend at Olympia Fields. Joaquin Niemann, whose first TOUR win came at A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier nearly a year ago, shot 68-67 to finish T3. The result moved him from 31st to 18th in the FedExCup, getting him into the TOUR Championship for the first time in the second season in which he was eligible. Mackenzie Hughes (71, T10) was the other player to move into the top 30, while Adam Long (by just three FedExCup points) and Streelman fell out of the top 30. Niemann's play was a surprise, to put it mildly. The 21-year-old missed the cut at THE NORTHERN TRUST, finished T42 at the Wyndham Championship, and missed the cut at the PGA Championship. He had struggled even going back to June, when the TOUR returned. But his performance at Olympia Fields, especially Sunday, when he shot a front-nine 31, served as a reminder of how good he is when he's on, and what a bright future he has. "Yeah, it’s awesome to get one of those weeks that you play good," Niemann said. "I haven’t been playing great the last couple weeks, so this gave me a lot of confidence what is coming next for East Lake. I just feel great. I’m happy to be in this situation right now." QUOTEBOARD "I still can't believe what just happened." - Jon Rahm "The goal was to be No. 1 going into East Lake, and I am still No. 1." - Dustin Johnson "I played awesome the front nine. I was 4 under. I was right there." - Joaquin Niemann FEDEXCUP STANDINGS The No.1 seed in the FedExCup standings will start the TOUR Championship at 10-under par and with a two-shot lead before the season-ending tournament starts Friday. Although Jon Rahm won the BMW Championship, Dustin Johnson secured the top seed with his runner-up finish. He will start this week's TOUR Championship, which begins Friday, with a two-stroke lead over Rahm and a three-stroke lead over No. 3 seed Justin Thomas. Here's how the rest of the top 10 shake out. 1. Dustin Johnson -10 2. Jon Rahm -8 3. Justin Thomas -7 4. Webb Simpson -6 5. Collin Morikawa -5 6. Daniel Berger -4 7. Harris English -4 8. Bryson DeChambeau -4 9. Sungjae Im -4 10. Hideki Matsuyama -4 SOCIAL SNAPSHOT
KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. – Ben Cook, who splits time teaching at Yankee Springs Golf Course in Wayland, Michigan and John’s Island Golf Club in Vero Beach, Florida, shot a final-round 74 to finish 4 over and win low club professional at the 103rd PGA Championship at Kiawah Island. He made a par putt of just over seven feet to make the cut on the number early Friday evening. “Without that, it would have – none of this would have happened,” he said. “Very, very blessed and thankful that I made that putt for sure.” Brad Marek (76, 12 over), who teaches junior golfers in Northern California, was the other club pro who made the cut. He was neck-and-neck with Cook until making an 8 on 17 on Saturday. He is 37 and was overcome with emotion as he described how much he put into playing his first PGA. “Pretty exhausted,” he said. “I’ve been here for 10 days now, so there was a lot of prep that went in with my coach and my caddie, my wife. (Tearing up.) Sorry. Just really proud.” Cook will receive a crystal bowl as low club pro to make the cut from the Team of 20 at Kiawah. At least one club professional has made the cut in five of the last six PGA Championships. Cook, 27, estimated he was followed by a crew of 20-plus friends and family, some wearing #TeamBenny T-shirts, from his hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. He played the PGA TOUR Latinoamérica in 2018 and has aspirations to make it onto the Korn Ferry Tour. “Making a cut in a major you get to skip to the second stage of Q-School in the fall,” he said. “That would be worst-case scenario. I still have Latin American PGA TOUR status. If I finish Top-10 on the Order of Merit or their points list, I’ll get to go to final stage of Q-School, get a card. Depending on how you play, you get better status.” He won a convert in Webb Simpson (72, 2 over) and his caddie Paul Tesori, with whom he was paired for the final 36 holes. He and Simpson both shot 69 in the third round. Cook birdied 17. “My caddie, we walked off the green on 17 and he said, ‘This guy, how does he lose any tournament he plays in?’” Simpson said. “‘He should be out here with us.’ Impressive.” The caddie had more kind words after the final round Sunday. “Paul was like, ‘Hey, use this as a springboard and see if you can build on that momentum that you created this week and see if you can get to the next level,’” Cook said. “Which was really nice. They are hoping to see me out here on a more regular basis, which is great.” Next up for him: U.S. Open sectional qualifying, most likely in Columbus, Ohio. “It was so cool,” he said of his week at Kiawah, which marked his third PGA Championship start but his first made cut. “Having as many people as we did at every hole, the crowds are great, a lot of cheers even if you hit a bad shot to keep the momentum going, it was really fun.”
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Even the best can doubt themselves. Often, we see our golf heroes as herculean. We see them strut down the fairways with bravado, smash the ball so hard you feel the cover will come off, and make putts from everywhere. They have enviable bank balances and fly on private planes. Everything seems to be good and rosy. But at the end of the day, just like you and me, they’re human. Golf is a great equalizer when it comes to the mental battles. We’ve seen many a rollercoaster career. And even the most confident humans can lack self-belief at times. Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, Jason Day and Adam Scott have all been the best in the world – but it doesn’t absolve them of self-doubt. “I face self-doubt on a daily basis in tournament rounds,” Spieth admits. “I feel the longer I’ve played, the more my self-belief’s sort of wavered a little bit,” McIlroy adds. “When you lose it you have to dig deep and start asking yourself some pretty blunt questions and give yourself some honest answers,” Scott says. McIlroy, the reigning FedExCup champion, began believing he was the best when he was just 10, but now he speaks of how the depth of competition increases the difficulty of maintaining a dominant mindset. I feel the longer I’ve played, the more my self-belief has wavered a little bit. “I think you would be somewhat of a machine if you said every week that I’m the best and I believe in myself 100 percent,” McIlroy says. According to Day, the defending champion at THE PLAYERS, self-belief is the biggest plague on his game right now. That’s right. The same man who dominated THE PLAYERS Stadium Course a year ago to win by four shots in wire-to-wire fashion. The one who won seven times in 17 starts. That guy struggles to believe in himself. “That’s one thing that I probably struggle with the most out of my whole game is the actual self-belief,” Day confirms. “When it’s there, I usually play some very, very good golf. I, like everyone else, will kind of struggle with certain things out here, but that’s one thing that I’ve always constantly been trying to get better at each and every year.” Day’s current struggles center around not having a specific goal to strive hard toward. He spent his early career chasing the dream of being world No. 1 and winning a major championship. He’s done both. And he has admitted his 51 weeks at the top added stress to his existence, so now he must find the motivation to put in the extra work to get back there. “When I think about Tiger Woods and how he dominated for over 13 years at No. 1, I always think, why was he so motivated?” Day recently told PGATOUR.COM. “He was literally trying to break Jack’s major record. He wanted to be the best ever, hands down, without a question, the best. “I’ve wanted to become No. 1 in the world and I’ve wanted to win major championships, but I’ve never wanted to break Jack’s record. I’ve never wanted to be better than Tiger Woods. I never wanted to chase anyone.” So now Day is trying to find the new target in his heart. He is trying to find the belief that he does belong at the top. That he can strive to the same levels reached by the greats before him. “I haven’t determined that benchmark yet. I need to find that motivating factor that will push me to work harder than anyone in the world,” he says. Neale Smith, a former TOUR pro who is now a sports psychologist for a handful of players, says the key is to return to what has worked in the past. “Golf is designed to get you negative and tournament golf is another layer of that. No one hits it perfect or is good every day,” Smith says. “In a perfect world, you’d want high belief on every shot, but we know that’s not going to happen. So, it is doing the best you can. “Everyone goes through cycles and with the right awareness every player has a recipe for how they’ve played well. Unless the context in their lives has changed a lot, it’s about respecting what helps them play well and part of the journey of tournament golf is learning your own recipe for success. “When you’re struggling, often what happens is a lot of searching outside that recipe, which generally, is not that helpful. If you can search within what you’ve done well at in the past you are likely to play well again.” And so the mental battle continues. McIlroy says Woods and Nicklaus might be the only guys in history who may have mastered it for long periods. Spieth’s methods of finding his happy place are to simply say, “Who cares?” In the grand scheme of things, it is just golf. It is not life and death. “So what if I hit it in the water on this shot. I make a bogey; is that going to change my life? No. If I think about it that way, I’m more freed up,” the Texan says. “And then if it goes in the water, I need to stick with that. That’s the toughest thing for me is being carefree and then not reacting if something doesn’t go well. I’m working on it and your mental game is something that we should be working on as much as we work on the physical components of our game. “It’s always a work in progress, and the bigger the tournament, the more work that’s required.” And it doesn’t get much bigger than THE PLAYERS Championship. Where TPC Sawgrass can throw multiple situations at you to doubt yourself. May the most confident man win.
