No one is talking about Jon Rahm. Maybe we should be

Sixth in the betting stakes, Jon Rahm is flying under the radar ahead of the PGA Championship despite outperforming Scheffler and Rory across two key metrics.

Jon Rahm is in an unusual position right now. Without a win since September and ranked 82nd in the Official World Golf Rankings, the Spaniard is barely part of the conversation when it comes to predicting the winner of this week’s PGA Championship at Quail Hollow.

One bookmaker even has him listed at 22-1 to get his hands on the Wanamaker Trophy, which probably says as much about the form of his rivals as it does the perception that he has been struggling for form since his big-money move to LIV Golf.

There is no denying that Rahm’s performances in the Majors last season fell below his usual standards, but judging him on such a small sample size means we’re also ignoring the other 48 weeks of the year. Take a broader view and you can make the case that the captain of Legion XIII is riding a wave of consistency that only the big three can match.

A tie for seventh on his last outing means he’s yet to finish outside the top 10 in 19 LIV events, winning two of them alongside the 2024 Individual Championship. In that time, he’s a combined 188 under par with only four of 60 rounds over par. Not bad for someone supposedly struggling for form.

Since switching into the Odyssey Ai-One #24 Slant putter and the Callaway Elyte Triple Diamond driver at the start of the year, Rahm has quietly emerged as the fourth-best player in the world, according to Data Golf, with a better strokes-gained record around the green and off the tee than Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy.

Only an error-strewn opening round of 75 at Augusta National last month stopped him from contending for victory at the Masters, a point he made ahead of LIV Golf Korea when discussing the ‘silly mistakes’ that have cost him multiple times so far this season.

“I’m just not doing everything I need to do right,” he revealed. “Sometimes you also need a little bit of luck in your favour, not that I haven’t been lucky. I just haven’t done myself any favours on the golf course, I would say it like that. While I like having top 10s and I like being a good player week in and week out, winning obviously is what matters more.

“I would gladly give up some of those top 10s for more wins. I keep playing well, I keep putting myself close enough, just every once in a while there have been enough mistakes where I’m just not quite close enough going into the back nine on Sunday.”

Theoretically, Quail Hollow is a course that should play into his hands – a fact he also acknowledged when discussing which course puzzles him the most out on Tour.

“It’s a course that, on paper, I should do really good at, and the two times I’ve played, I just haven’t played great,” he explained. “But that’s also because I just wasn’t hitting it great. It’s such a demanding golf course that if you’re not hitting it well, especially off the tee, you’re going to have a long week, and that’s what happened to me both times.

“But there are certain courses that you learn to play, like Muirfield Village. The first time I went, I played terribly. After that, I played a little better.”

In his two previous visits to Quail Hollow, in 2017 and 2021, Rahm has failed to crack the top 50 which is hardly a ringing endorsement for his chances of winning a third Major title. But when you consider he returned to Muirfield Village after a three-year absence and won the tournament by three, he might just benefit from coming in with a fresh set of eyes and with a point to prove as the forgotten man of European golf. 

Write him off at your peril.