The 121st edition of the United States Open is now in the record books. Contested alongside the Pacific Ocean at the stunningly beautiful Torrey Pines South Golf Course, this year’s version of our National Open featured great golf and riveting theatre. Jon Rahm of Spain was another one of those untapped potential 20-somethings to show his mettle and add a major championship to an already impressive golfing resume. He did so by watching those around him falter under the glare of the heat of grand slam golf and then make the 2021 U.S. Open his own by recording birdies on the final two holes, something that has only been done three times over the course of U.S. Open history.
Torrey Pines is a municipal golf course in the same vein as San Francisco’s Harding Park. While it will never be mistaken for Pebble Beach, Winged Foot or Oakmont, it is one tough test of golf that is very deserving of hosting a major championship every 15 years or so. On top of that, it is a West Coast venue. The United States Golf Association loves the West Coast because it can broadcast the final nine holes of its Open Championship during weekend East Coast prime time and provide great ratings against the likes of NCIS: New Orleans, the Simpsons, and 60 Minutes. Such is one of the prime time reasons why the U.S. Open has recently visited Chambers Bay in Tacoma, Pebble Beach, Torrey Pines and plans to hold their National Open at Los Angeles Country Club in just two years.
Par is always a good score at the U.S. Open and the key to staying near the top of the leader board is to avoid those glaring double-bogeys and even quadruple-bogeys when you least want them. The Open is the toughest tournament to win in professional golf because it demands power and accuracy off the tee, stellar iron play, a brilliant short game, and the ability to make one unnerving 6-foot par putt after another, all while keeping one’s cool.
This year’s Open had its early feel-good moments with 48-year-old Englishman Richard Bland atop the leader board after two days following rounds of 70-67. Bland has exactly one British Masters title to his name and guys like Bland don’t win majors let alone our National Open. He concluded his weekend carding scores of 77 and 78 to finish well in the middle of the pack. By the middle of the final round on Sunday, Russell Henley, a three-time tour winner from the University of Georgia, and the hope of Canada, McKenzie Hughes, were in the midst of a 10-golfer scrum, all whom were within one stroke of one another with Henley leading the way at 4-under-par However, just like Bland, journeymen golfers such as Henley and Hughes don’t ever seem to prevail at the U.S. Open, or at least not since Orville Moody way back in 1969.
The eight other golfers in the hunt on the front nine Sunday included five major champions, namely Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland with four majors, Louis Oosthuizen of South Africa, defending champion Bryson DeChambeau, four-time major winner Brooks Koepka, Harding Park PGA champion Collin Morikawa of UC Berkeley, the best golfer without a major, Paul Casey of England, and two members of the new breed who were destined for a breakthrough moment, namely Matthew Wolff and Spain’s Jon Rahm.
Then, as has so often happened at many a United States Open, top-notch golfers started to make glaring mistakes and falter during the tournament’s most crucial moments. DeChambeau shot a front-nine 33 but was unable to recreate the magic of his win at Winged Foot. He carded a horrid 44 on the inward nine. He didn’t exactly play bogey golf as he hit just two fairways all day, made double-bogey on the par-5 13th hole, and then recorded one of the ugliest quadruple-bogeys in the history of grand slam golf at the 17th hole. It appeared to be the ultimate crash and burn from one of the game’s top players.
Speaking of top players, Brooks Koepka is as top notch as it gets with a pair of U.S. Opens and two PGA Championships to his name. Yet with just three holes to go, he found a way to bogey the 16th hole as well as the relatively easy 18th hole to fall out of contention. It was a very un-Brooks like endeavor.
The same was true of another four-time major titlist, namely Rory McIlroy. Rory made a brutal double-bogey on the 12th hole with sand issues and could never recover from it. Wolff couldn’t find the fairways on the back nine, Hughes got his ball stuck in a tree following a wild duck hook, and Paul Casey couldn’t make those par putts to keep him in the hunt. Morikawa wasn’t the iron master that he usually is and made a costly double-bogey on the 13th just like Bryson. With just two holes left to be played, it all came down to Jon Rahm and Louis Oosthuizen. It also came down to hitting fairways and hitting greens in regulation.
Oosthuizen won the 2010 British Open at St. Andrews in a runaway, and while he has been a world-class golfer ever since, he is one of just eight golfers in the history of the game who has finished in second place in all four of the game’s major championships. He spent the majority of the back nine at 5-under-par. Rahm was hovering one stroke back with just two holes to play after running off seven consecutive pars on the back nine. He would end up hitting 80 percent of his greens in regulation. And then 26-year-old Jon Rahm channeled his inner Ben Hogan (Oakmont 1953), Jack Nicklaus (Baltusrol 1980) and Tom Watson (Pebble Beach 1982) to win the 2021 National Open. Rahm made a birdie-three on the 17th hole while sinking a 24-foot putt with 6 feet of left-to-right break. He played safe from the greenside bunker on the 18th hole and sank a curling 18-footer to get to 6-under-par for the tournament, one stroke ahead of Oosthuizen. Two birdies on the final two holes of the National Open would give him just what he needed as Oosthuizen would finish bogey-birdie. It was simply too little, too late for the snakebitten South African. It was his sixth runner-up in a grand slam tournament.
Jon Rahm attributed his win to karma. He won his first PGA Tour event five years ago at Torrey Pines, he got engaged to his wife at Torrey Pines last year, and with three generations of family looking on, he celebrated his first major win. He joins fellow countrymen Seve Ballesteros, Jose Maria Olazabal and Sergio Garcia as Spanish grand slam winners, and he is the first member of that illustrious foursome to win the U.S. Open. At age 26, there should be more. Rahm continues to get better, he continues to control his fiery emotions, and he is a world-class golfer.
One of golf’s new breed won his first major during one of the more dramatic finishes of our National Open. Now it’s on to Royal St. George and the British Open next month
