The impressive numbers of Jon Rahm since he left the PGA Tour to sign for LIV Golf are impeccable. Beyond the absence of victories, the reality is that his game, if we stick only to the result, can’t be faulted much.
For example, in the eight tournaments he has played, seven of LIV plus the Masters, his average strokes is 68.82, the same with which he ended last season and just a hundredth more than his best ever record, the 68.81 he set in the 2019-2020 campaign.
His average birdies per round is also very strong. It’s at 4.8, the highest of his entire career. Similarly, his bogey percentage per round is 1.88, the second lowest of his life after the aforementioned 19/20 season, when he set the bar at 1.86. In this sense, another data in his favour this year is the birdie and bogey ratio. It is also the best of his career with 2.55 birdies for every bogey made.
However, there is one parameter that is somewhat off this year and that, among other things, could influence the fact that he has not yet won a tournament. We are referring to the number of double bogeys or worse he has added in 2024. They are a total of seven, three double bogeys and a triple bogey in LIV and three double bogeys in the Masters. The average is 0.87 per round.
If we look throughout his entire career, season by season since he turned professional in 2016, this is the highest figure since the 2018/2019 season. Rahm had managed to keep the figure very low in the last three years. Last season was 0.52, two years ago it was 0.57 and in 20/21 he reduced it to 0.48 per round. Regarding the 19/20 season, there is almost a technical tie, as he stopped the counter at 0.88, just half a tenth more than this year. However, his big mistakes were high in 18/19 and 17/18, with an average per round above one.
It seems that Jon has broken the trend in terms of the big numbers. In this sense, it is worth remembering that the three triple bogeys in the Masters this year is his highest figure in a Major tied with the Masters of 2017 and the Open of 2018, when he made two double bogeys and a triple bogey. For now, with eight tournaments played, it could be said that it is circumstantial, that we have to wait until the end of the year, but it does reflect an objective trend that we have no doubt Jon will try to remedy in the remainder of the campaign, half of the LIV Golf calendar, three Majors, starting with the PGA next week, and whatever he decides to play in the DP World Tour.
Rahm has always been a great advocate of the theory that in major weeks, for example, the key is to avoid big mistakes. You can make all the bogeys you want, understand the comment, but what you have to avoid are double bogeys or worse. We’ll see what version we find in Valhalla.
