How Rahm raised his game even higher

With seven PGA TOUR titles, Ryder Cup appearances and victories all over the globe, Jon Rahm entered the 2022-23 PGA TOUR season as unquestionably one of the biggest stars in the game.

So, what did he go and do? He got better. Way better.

When Rahm won his third event of the 2022-23 PGA TOUR season – The Genesis Invitational, on February 19 – he became the fastest player to reach three wins in a calendar year since Johnny Miller in 1975. He followed that with a ball striking clinic at Augusta to pick up his second major championship.

Rahm has turned from star to dominant force thanks to big-time improvements in several areas of his game. That’s no easy task, considering he wasn’t doing too poorly to begin with.

Improved approach play

On the surface, Rahm didn’t seem to have much to clean up in terms of ball-striking one year ago. Entering the 2022 Mexico Open at Vidanta, Rahm led the TOUR in both Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and greens in regulation. In four of his first five full seasons on TOUR, he wound up in the top-10 in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green. Nobody could characterize Rahm as anything less than elite when it came to his game off the tee or with his irons.

Perhaps, though, that’s what makes his approach play improvement even more impressive. Rahm has made a quantum leap this season from a very good approach player to arguably the best in the sport. The TOUR’s current leader in Strokes Gained: Approach per round, Rahm is gaining half-a-stroke more per round in that metric than he was at this time one year ago. On approaches from the fairway, Rahm is averaging 29 feet, 4 inches from the cup. That’s 16 inches better than this time last year, and about three-and-a-half feet better than the TOUR average.

At the Masters, Rahm averaged 1.21 Strokes Gained: Approach per round, sixth-best in the field. Again, approach play proved to be a separating factor at the top of the leaderboard in Augusta: it marked the seventh time in the last nine years that the Masters champion ranked in the top-six that week in Strokes Gained: Approach. Rahm hit 86% of his fairways and 72% of his greens in regulation for the week at the Masters, the first winner to hit both of those benchmarks since Ben Crenshaw in 1995.

Sharper short game

Where Rahm’s tee-to-green game didn’t need much statistical refining entering this championship last year, his play around the greens was another story altogether. At this time in 2022, Rahm was losing more than a quarter of a stroke per round to the field on shots around the green, earning a paltry ranking of 173rd. Last season, players on the PGA TOUR got up-and-down from the bunker at a rate of 49.2%. Rahm’s rate entering the ’22 Mexico Open was significantly lower than that – just 38.9%.

Rahm has undoubtedly worked hard on this part of his game in recent months – because his improvement has been astronomical. The difference in his Strokes Gained: Around the Green average – from losing 0.26 per round to gaining 0.25 – adds up to more than two full strokes every four rounds. Rahm is up to 54.6% in sand saves, and his overall scrambling rate is up nearly 8%.

Rahm didn’t miss many greens at Augusta National, but when he did, nobody was better at saving par. Rahm went 16-for-20 for the week scrambling, the best rate (80%) of any player in the field. It was the first time a Masters champion scrambled at a clip of 80% or better since Trevor Immelman (81%) in 2008.

Perfecting the putting stroke

Even with all those enormous strides in his approach play and short game, his biggest improvements have come with the putter. Entering last year’s Mexico Open, Rahm was losing strokes to the field on the greens. This season, he’s vaulted into the top-20, picking up more than half-a-stroke per round. Rahm’s +0.69 Strokes Gained: Putting improvement is even larger than his upticks in approach play and around the greens.

From 15 to 20 feet away, Rahm was significantly below average a season ago. This year, he’s making them from that range at the fifth-best clip among qualified players. That’s emblematic of his improvement on the greens, regardless of putt length. At this point last season, Rahm was making 70 feet, 6 inches worth of putts per round – right around the TOUR average. In 2022-23, he’s making 10 more feet of putts per round, ranking him 14th on TOUR.

In his win at last year’s Mexico Open at Vidanta, Rahm had a big turnaround week on the greens, snapping a streak of four consecutive events where he lost strokes to the field putting. Rahm went without a three-putt for the entirety of the tournament and missed just four putts all week inside 10 feet.

Heading into this week in even stronger form on the greens, Rahm will be a difficult man to beat in Mexico.