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As sunset threatened to send us to a real Monday Finish in the California desert, Jon Rahm finally nailed a birdie putt on the fourth playoff hole to claim his second PGA TOUR win at the CareerBuilder Challenge. Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Rahm’s rapid rise in golf continued all the way to second place in the FedExCup and the Official World Golf Rankings with his win in La Quinta. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. You have to love Jon Rahm’s aggression. While we often talk about the outward passion of Spanish golfers and argue the merits of playing with your heart on your sleeve, it is Rahm’s aggressive mode of play that impresses me most. On Sunday in the desert as Rahm came down to the final few holes of regulation, one thing had been strikingly obvious. He was always trying to win the golf tournament and he was doing it by taking dead aim. Sure, not a single birdie dropped in the last four holes of regulation – or the first three of the playoff – but he created opportunities by playing fearless. On the back nine Sunday, he hit six of seven fairways and eight of nine greens in regulation – and there was nothing conservative about any of it. He gave himself decent looks at birdie on all four playoff holes. This guy is not interested in being second and certainly not afraid to win. 2. Rahm is seemingly finding the perfect balance for his temperament. Spanish people are usually wonderfully passionate. But the knock on Rahm’s countryman Sergio Garcia throughout his impressive career was his passion and emotion could get the best of him at times. As Rahm hit the elite golf landscape there was a similar feeling… the talent is immense, but would the passion get in the way? Honestly, a player should do what works best for them. But over the last year there has been a noticeable harnessing of Rahm’s fire. It certainly hasn’t gone missing – it is clearly on show – but the maturity to deal with things has grown. Saturday, he battled his way through a frustrating round in windy conditions and didn’t implode. Sunday, the par-5s were becoming a bunch of wasted chances – yet he remained focused on the job at hand and was ultimately rewarded with victory. 3. We are looking at a future No.1. Yes – I know this is not really a hot take given the fact Rahm has risen up the rankings at lightning speed, but at this stage he’s still got work to do to catch Dustin Johnson so it’s no lay down misère. And with the likes of Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Hideki Matsuyama, Rory McIlroy and Jason Day amongst many others expecting big seasons, it will be no cake walk. But still, it seems certainly likely. Three years ago Rahm ranked 1576th in the world. Two years ago he was 586th. A year ago he was 137th. He now sits second. Of course he has the benefit of not defending too many points yet and having a favorable divisor – this will change now. But he still shows enough drive and talent to become just the second player from Spain to the be the best in the world. 4. Andrew Landry is making a name for himself – again. There were plenty of people watching Landry push Rahm to the brink on Sunday thinking – “where do I know this guy from?â€� A Web.com Tour graduate this season – for the second time in his career – Landry is not in the consciousness of all golf fans. The first time around (2015-16) he failed to stay on the PGA TOUR but you might remember him as the upstart of the 2016 U.S. Open at Oakmont. In the middle of his rookie season on the PGA TOUR – having missed six of 11 cuts and finishing no higher than T41 – Landry took the first-round lead at the U.S. Open and was sitting second through 36 and 54 holes. A final round 78 saw him fade to T15 but it was proof his game is high caliber. Last season he won on the web.com Tour to get himself back on the big stage and while his rookie season opened with five straight missed cuts, this time around he has three top-10s from his first seven starts and sits 11th in the FedExCup. He has evolved and could easily be a first-time winner sometime soon. 5. Hadwin home in the desert. A year from now, when you are looking for who to pick as a possible winner or who to pick on your fantasy team – slate Adam Hadwin. It was refreshing to see the Canadian finish T3 this week after he failed to really kick on from his 2017 win at the Valspar Championship. The International Team member from the Presidents Cup had just two top-10 finishes after his win in March last year but this might be the start of a return to his best golf. Or it might just be he’s very much at home at La Quinta. A year ago he shot 59 on Saturday and finished runner up in the event and two years ago he was T6. He has yet to shoot an over-par score in 16 rounds at the CareerBuilder Challenge. He made a late run this time around but ultimately fell two shots shy of the playoff. An even par front nine Sunday left him pushing and while a 4-under final nine was impressive, it wasn’t enough. FIVE INSIGHTS 1. With the win, Rahm moved from No. 20 to No. 2 in the FedExCup standings. Last season, in his first full season on TOUR, Rahm finished No. 5 in the FedExCup. Rahm also passed Jordan Spieth and moved to No. 2 in the Official World Golf Ranking. 2. It marks Jon Rahm’s second PGA TOUR title in his 38th career start at the age of 23 years, 2 months, 11 days. Rahm is the second-youngest winner of the CareerBuilder Challenge. Jack Nicklaus was 23 years, 0 months, 13 days when he claimed the title in 1963. Since his first PGA TOUR start as a professional at The National in June, 2016 (T3), Rahm has recorded 15 top-five results in 38 starts worldwide, including four victories (two on European Tour). 3. Rahm’s opening-round 62 at La Quinta matched his career low on TOUR, set in the first round of The National in 2016, and his 36-hole total of 129 surpassed his previous best, which was set at the same tournament. 4. Andrew Landry went 59 consecutive holes this week before making his first bogey at his 60th hole, the par-3 fifth at the Stadium Course. Landry has six rounds on the PGA TOUR without a bogey or worse, three coming this week. 5. Martin Piller (T3) and Sam Saunders (T8) led the field with 28 birdies for the week (Rahm had 26 and an eagle). Saunders shot a final round 8-under 64 with six birdies in his last eight holes. A year after we had a 59, 62 was the low score of the week – shot by Rahm in the opening round at La Quinta Country Club.
Mecklin Ragan was pleased, as always, when she looked at her phone to see a text from Scottie Scheffler. Turns out, though, the young PGA TOUR pro wasn't just checking up on his long-time friend. Scheffler told Ragan, who is the CEO of Triumph Over Kid Cancer, that he had just won some money unexpectedly and he wanted to give some of it to the charity she founded with her late brother, James. How would she feel if he did that, the 24-year-old Texan asked in the text. "How would I feel about that? Scottie, that’s incredible. Thank you so much," Ragan remembers responding. "I don’t know many professional golfers and I definitely don’t know any as well as I do Scottie. But he is such a kind-hearted, genuine, humble young man who continues to go out of his way to help someone that’s in a worse situation than he is in. "In spite of all of the more recent fame and success that he’s had, he continues to still be the same guy that he was the first time that I met him when he must’ve been, I don’t know, 12 or 13 years old." Scheffler's charitable windfall came when he won the RSM Birdies Fore Love competition and its $300,000 first prize last fall. The man who went on to win PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year honors made one more birdie than Lanto Griffin in the competition that spanned the first 11 events of the season. In addition to the $50,000 he donated to TOKC, Scheffler also gave $50,000 to the North Texas PGA Section in support of its junior golf programs that he once participated in and $200,000 to the Davis Love III Foundation. But Scheffler's support of TOKC was personal. He met James when the two were teenagers playing the Legends Junior Tour in their native Texas and the two bonded over their shared love of golf. James, who was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in the summer of 2006 shortly after he turned 13, came to the game late. He'd been a tennis player but gave up the game after a limb salvage operation that replaced 40 percent of his femur, his knee and 20 percent of his tibia with metal. While his talent didn't approach that of Scheffler, Ragan remembers her brother working his handicap into single digits quickly, even as the cancer began to metastasize to his lungs. "We used to joke — he’s like, man, I should have picked this up at a younger age," Ragan recalls, noting that James was never one to sit still. "What was I doing playing tennis? Ragan says James, who was salutatorian of his high school graduating class, admired Scheffler for his talent and the hard work he put into his game. "James was somebody who knew that he wasn’t going to have a lot of time on his earth this, first, and he wanted to make the most of his moments," she said. "And what he saw in Scotty was a humble, hardworking young man who had a gift, a true gift, and wasn’t squandering that gift. Even from a young age, Scotty knew what he was going to be capable of and he had a goal and he was constantly working towards it. "And he was a fantastic student. … He made sure to graduate before he went on the TOUR type of thing. But I think that’s really why James admired Scotty. And I think that in James, Scotty found a like-minded young man, a lover of golf and a friend, just somebody with similar ideals." For all intents and purposes, TOKC was born on James' 14th birthday. The several rounds of chemotherapy James had undergone appeared to be working and the Ragan family thought he was nearly cancer-free. "My parents were pretty hell-bent on celebrating the fact that as terrible of a year that it had been that it seemed like James had beaten cancer," says Ragan, who is a surgical resident at a Virginia hospital with an eye toward becoming a pediatric surgeon who operates on kids with cancer. "… And James, while he enjoyed a good party, he was never one that enjoyed having the spotlight on him. So, instead he managed to turn it into a birthday party/ fundraiser." In lieu of gifts, James asked for donations - either to the children's hospital in his hometown of Corpus Christi or to an osteosarcoma research project at MD Anderson. Everyone wore togas - which became a theme of TOKC's charitable efforts - and a phenomenal $40,000 was raised. "We had no idea what we were doing," Ragan recalls. "We just had some very, very generous people in our community that saw a young man trying to make a difference and wanted to be a part of it." A couple of months later, though, the news was dire. The family learned that James' cancer had metastasized to his lungs "and at that point, patients with osteosarcoma become terminal," Ragan says. "They’re going to die. It’s a question of when." The need to fund research into pediatric cancer that the Ragan family had embraced with that first toga party soon became a mission. A second event was held for James' 15th birthday and this time, it included a golf tournament after James had taken up - and taken to — the game. By 2010, James and Mecklin had formalized the name - Triumph Over Kid Cancer - and applied for 501 (C) (3) status. Their first major project was the Children's Sarcoma Initiative designed to give start-up grants to young researchers. The need for new approaches was great - the chemotherapeutic agents that James was being treated with were essentially the same ones that were used in the 1970s. In December of 2013, TOKC realized its goal of raising $1.5 million that was matched by MD Anderson. About two weeks later, James was told he didn't have much time left. He passed away on Feb. 17, 2014. "And then two weeks later, I was back with one of my board members at MD Anderson, taking meetings, figuring out what project we were going to support next," Ragan says. They chose a pediatric genome research and sequencing project at MD Anderson, raising $1.5 million in a matching agreement with the cancer hospital. Now, TOKC is funding two $1 million pledges - an immunotherapy-related project at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston and a phase two drug trial for kids with osteosarcoma and lung metastasis at MD Anderson. "One of the research projects that made this current research project possible was something that we supported through the Children's Sarcoma Initiative, our very first project," Mecklin says. "So, it’s been very interesting. It will be almost 15 years this year since we started fundraising. It’s been a decade now since the foundation’s been in existence and it’s taken all that time. "But to get to see some of the projects you supported start to come full circle is pretty, pretty interesting. And definitely makes you want to keep working because kids are still getting cancer and they need as much help as they can get." Over the years, Scheffler has become a fixture at TOKC charity golf tournaments. When he was in school at the University of Texas, he did everything he could do attend - even though the tournament was usually in May and the NCAAs were on the horizon. He's been the honorary starter since James died. The coronavirus canceled this year's Toga party but the TOKC tournament was held the day before Halloween. Scheffler couldn't be at the event but he made sure to be available on FaceTime for a Q&A. Ragan says that often kids with cancer have to give up sports they love to play like football and baseball. Golf and swimming, though, tend to offer new opportunities. So, to honor Scheffler's donation, TOKC has created a program called "Scottie's Heroes" that will provide a few age-appropriate golf clubs, a bag and other items to interested kids, many in the cities where Scheffler plays. "We can give it away to children with cancer that that are so inclined, and Scotty can also get these traveling when he’s at tournaments in different places," Ragan says. "He can share all the love with others that he shared with TOKC. … "We'll have some for him that he can take with him when he travels, and he can give them away to the children himself, as well. Because I know that that’s a fun part of it as well — getting to see a smile on a kid with cancer’s face."
FORT WORTH, Texas – Justin Rose would’ve made Ben Hogan proud in his second-round 64 at the Fort Worth Invitational. Rose hit 14 of his first 15 greens Friday and made seven birdies to take the lead after the morning wave completed play. He went low despite making just one putt outside of 10 feet. He is at 10-under 130, three shots ahead of Brooks Koepka and RBC Heritage winner Satoshi Kodaira. Hogan is considered by many to be the best ball-striker in the game’s history, and his presence is strong at Colonial. He won five times at the course that was founded by his mentor and good friend, Marvin Leonard. The clubhouse contains a re-creation of his office and a small museum dedicated to his World Golf Hall of Fame career. A 7-foot-tall statue of him staring down another well-struck shot overlooks the course, as well. Hogan is one of the inspirations for Rose’s longtime swing coach, Sean Foley. The pair put in a solid week of work last week, Rose said, and he added the Fort Worth Invitational to his schedule to gauge the state of his game after being unhappy with his recent form. Rose finished in the top 10 in 13 of 15 starts from last year’s FedExCup Playoffs to the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard in March. He finished 52nd in the Houston Open, 12th in the Masters and 23rd at THE PLAYERS, though. Rose started the final round at TPC Sawgrass in 55th place, but started to see positive signs after a final-round 66. “Sunday at The PLAYERS Championship, I felt like I worked into a slightly different feel, which really helped Sean and I kind of dial in a few things we’ve been working on. We had a good productive week last week training-wise,â€� Rose said. “It was nice to bring as good as you feel on the range to the tournament this week.â€� He hit his first 13 greens Friday. Eleven of those approach shots were within 16 feet of the hole. A pep talk from his caddie helped him keep his frustration at bay after missing three short birdie putts on his first four holes. He birdied five of his next seven holes. “He said, ‘Hey mate, just stay patient.’ From there, I got into a nice rhythm,â€� Rose said. “My first 15 holes today were about as good as I’ve played in a long time.â€� He did miss four of his last five greens, but has still hit 30 of 36 through two rounds. And he played Friday’s final five holes in 1 under par after holing a 35-foot birdie putt on 6 and chipping in on 7. He has made just two bogeys this week. Rose is trying to become the fifth multiple winner this season; Justin Thomas, Jason Day, Bubba Watson and Patton Kizzire have all won twice in 2017-18. Rose is 11th in this season’s FedExCup standings. He could rise as high as No. 2 with a victory.
