Jon Rahm holed a 66-foot putt for a birdie on the sole extra hole of a playoff with Dustin Johnson to win the BMW Championship today. Minutes prior, Johnson, playing in the last group, holed a 32-foot putt for a birdie on the last hole of regulation play to force the playoff with Rahm. That sequence had to be the most thrilling on the PGA Tour I’ve ever seen. You couldn’t really appreciate it unless you saw how both putts travelled across the two greens to go right in the middle of the hole.
Johnson’s 32-foot putt was pretty flat for the first 12 feet, so the ball went straight. But Johnson had to hit the putt soft enough for the ball to be barely rolling after that 12 feet when it descended a slope, picking up speed and breaking about three feet to right until it then broke about foot left the last 6 feet to go in the hole at the perfect speed. So, it was a double-breaking putt going downhill. Before he putted, I said to myself that the chances of him making that putt were no better than 50 to 1 and maybe 100 to 1.
But in the playoff, which started on the tenth hole, Rahm’s 66-foot putt was just as difficult as Johnson’s previous putt or more so. Rahm had to negotiate at least a 15-foot right-break and a significant downhill slope the last 15-20 feet. Johnson then hit his difficult 35-footer to tie, but the ball stopped about three inches from the right side of the cup.
When the stoic Dustin Johnson, dressed fully in dark blue, made his putt on 18, he gave a slight fist pump and smiled. But when the red-shirted Jon Rahm made his putt on the extra hole, the excitable Spaniard absolutely went bananas as if he was a Spanish Conquistador. He was running around and swinging his arms, exerting his powerful physique, as if in a boxing match with the mighty Mike Tyson.
It was the two best in the game going head-to-head. Johnson was #1 in World Ranking, and Rahm was #2. Next week is the Tour Championship, which is rated in the top four or five PGA Tour tournaments each year.
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