| Rahm’s never rebuilt his swing or talked about reinventing himself. Unlike his peers, he’s never seen with an instructor standing behind him on the practice tee. He isn’t experimenting with pop psychology or fad diets. He just keeps winning. Golf isn’t supposed to be so predictable. Chaos is inherent to the game. It’s one reason why it’s so addictive. The rewards are intermittent, coming at unexpected intervals. Not for Rahm, whose well-rounded game makes him difficult to beat. A passage in Joe Posnanski’s book “The Baseball 100” could be used to describe Rahm and our relationship to him. “(Baseball analyst) Bill James has talked often about how players who do one or two things well tend to be overrated, while people who do many things well are always underrated,” Posnanski wrote. “People who do famous things tend to be overrated, while people who are simply good day after day but never really make headlines tend to be underrated.” This season, Rahm ranks in the top 30 of all six Strokes Gained categories. His short golf swing is a byproduct of the club foot he was born with. It prevents him from taking the club too far back, but also is an action that rarely gets off-kilter. He is the best driver on the planet, leading the TOUR in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee last season. His combination of distance and accuracy gives him a head start on the field and keeps big numbers off of his card. Improvements to his wedge play and putting have taken his game to another level. He missed just eight fairways all week, ranking fourth in driving accuracy. He hit every fairway in the first round. His dependable fade had returned, a reliable shot that is difficult to beat. Then there are skills that can’t be measured by the analytics or launch monitors. “Some guys just have it deep down,” said his caddie, Adam Hayes. “They talk about the ‘it’ factor and I think that he has that.”
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