CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Jon Rahm did his best to make Scottie Scheffler fight for the trophy, then tried just as hard to explain how he came so close and yet so far.
The two-time major champion admitted how great it was to finally be back in the mix, as he battled into a tie on the back nine with Scheffler at Quail Hollow, only to falter down the stretch while Scheffler did what he does.
In the end, Scheffler secured a five-shot victory that was anything but easy and Rahm found himself seven shots back, lamenting how it could get that far away while admitting there is plenty of good to take from the week.
MORE: Final results, payouts from the PGA Championship
And if his candor in the aftermath means anything, he should be ready to build on the performance.
“It’s a tough pill to swallow right now,” Rahm said in the moments afterward while meeting with reporters.
The winner of the 2021 U.S. Open and 2023 Masters parlayed a patient front-nine approach to the final round with a three-birdie stretch to a tie for the lead with seven holes to go.
That he somehow finished so far back is both a testament to Scheffler’s resiliency and the difficulty others, including Rahm, had when closing out the tournament.
“God, it’s been awhile since I had that much fun on a golf course,” Rahm said.
Rahm on Saturday had acknowledged the chatter about how his move to LIV Golf might have impacted his lackluster performances in the majors.
Since the controversial decision to join LIV for multi-millions in December 2023, Rahm had performed admirably in LIV Golf League events—winning the individual title last year while never finishing outside of the top 10 in an event—but not so much at the four biggest tournaments.
Last year he tied for 45th in his Masters defense and missed the cut at the PGA Championship. He then withdrew from the U.S. Open due to a foot infection and tied for seventh at the British Open without seriously contending.
He tied for 14th last month at the Masters, but once again did so quietly. Good, but not great. It was not to Rahm's standards.
But he explained that his issues were swing-related, not LIV-related. He noted that some of those issues had begun to creep into his game after winning the Masters, well before jumping to LIV.
And some of those flaws crept in at times during the PGA Championship here.
“If there’s ever somebody that’s sitting right here that tells you nerves weren’t a part of it, they’re clearly lying,” Rahm said. “It's the main thing we do as a professional sport; it’s controlling what goes through your mind.
“It’s a couple of things. I think it’s linked to some of the things I’ve been working on in the swing. It was the trend today, right. The tee shots on 3, 5, 7 and then 16. They are not bad swings. It’s just a ball that starts left, and it’s not quite cutting.
“In fact, I would say 5, 7, and 16, if it’s zero wind, all the three balls are in the fairway. But with the wind being off the right, it’s not a swing that I can afford to make, right. So it’s kind of what happened there.”
Rahm went bogey-free through 11 holes to tie for the lead. Scheffler pulled ahead with a birdie at the 10th but Rahm was still in it as his birdie putt on 13 lipped out.
“You know what position you’re in because, even if you don’t want to look at leaderboards, the crowd lets you know,” Rahm said. “They’re so excited, it doesn’t matter, they’ll tell you. Even when you don’t know exactly what’s going on on a hole, if you hear a cheer, you do know what’s going on.
“Like on 12 green when I hit my putt, at the same time I heard a cheer from 10; I was fully aware that was a Scottie birdie. I just could tell, you’re there enough times.
“Even then, even if I was 1 back, I knew that if I finished the five holes under par, I was going to give myself a really good run to possibly win it and maybe go into a playoff.”
At the drivable par-4 14th, Rahm hit a 5-wood that he believed was drawing perfectly but hit a slope next to the green and bounded into the bunker.
No excuses, he said.
“To be fair, that might have been the best swing of the week,” Rahm said. “For a guy who can’t hit draws, to hit a draw with a 5-wood that well in that moment ... where I ended up in the bunker, if ‘A-plus’ is on the green, that’s position ‘A.’ That’s about as easy an up-and-down as you’re going to have.”
But Rahm couldn’t convert the birdie there, nor on the par-5 15th where he was next to the green in two shots but hit an approach putt too hard and failed to make the birdie.
“If there’s ever a time where it felt like it was slipping away to an extent, it was not birdieing 14 and 15,” he said. “That was definitely the mistake, before, obviously finishing poorly.”
Rahm was still just a shot behind at that point but it was clear that he needed to make something happen. Scheffler would play those birdie holes behind him. Instead, Rahm played the last three holes in 5 over par to shoot 73.
He bogeyed the 16th, hit his tee shot in the water at the 17th and again at the 18th.
“I think it’s the first time I’ve been in position to win a major that close and haven’t done it,” Rahm said. “The only times I think I’ve been in the lead in a major on a Sunday, I’ve been able to close it out, and this is a very different situation.
“So I don’t know exactly. But if there’s ever a time, that’s what family’s for is the best. Luckily I’m going to get home maybe on time to get the kids to bed or not, I’m not sure. To them, whatever I did today, win or lose, they don’t care. So that’s always a good perspective.
“I always like to go back a little bit on something that (NBA Hall of Famer and TV analyst) Charles Barkley likes to remind basketball players all the time. Like, I play golf for a living. It’s incredible. Am I embarrassed a little bit about how I finished today? Yeah. But I just need to get over it, get over myself. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not like I’m a doctor or a first responder, where somebody if they have a bad day, truly bad things happen."
Rahm will return at next month's U.S. Open at Oakmont, where he would seemingly be well-suited to contend again.
In the aftermath, Rahm was annoyed, most certainly. But hardly defeated. He looked and sounded like a player who just might use the experience to his benefit.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as ‘A Tough Pill to Swallow’: Jon Rahm Laments PGA That Got Away.