Jon Rahm Wins BMW Championship
|Jon Rahm closed with a 66-64 on the weekend at an Olympia Fields golf course that was playing like a major championship, but it will be his 66-foot birdie putt on the first hole of a playoff against Dustin Johnson that will be remembered by golf fans for a long time from his win at the BMW Championship.
66 FEET for the WIN! 🏆
UNBELIEVABLE putt from @JonRahmPGA to claim @BMWChamps in a playoff! #QuickHits pic.twitter.com/DktJRjZLoj
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 30, 2020
Johnson had drained a 45-foot birdie on the final hole of regulation to force the playoff.
DJ had about a 3% chance to make this putt.
Last decade there were 123,422 attempts from 40-50 feet.
4,191 holed out. pic.twitter.com/R7tNeR2Zhh
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 31, 2020
“I still can’t believe what just happened, what happened the last hour of play,” Rahm said. “When I had that long putt, my hope was to get myself somewhat of a doable uphill putt, somewhere hopefully within three feet, but that was extremely difficult, so three to six feet. I was just kind of hoping to give myself that type of a chance.”
The victory was Rahm’s second of the season and 11th worldwide in his four years as a tour pro.
Johnson was coming off his dominating win lat week at the Northern Trust at TPC Boston and was the 54 hole leader at Olympia Fields.
“I knew I needed to make birdie to get into the playoff,” Johnson said. “But yeah, I played an unbelievable putt, got in the playoff and then Jon made an even more ridiculous putt on top of me, and then I gave it a good effort. I thought I made it when it was coming down the hill. It just kind of ran out of a little bit of speed and missed just low.”
Johnson remains atop the FedEx Cup standings and will begin next week’s TOUR Championship at 10-under, followed by Rahm at 8-under and Justin Thomas at 7-under.
The field is set.
The leaderboard is set too.The top 30 for Friday @PlayoffFinale: pic.twitter.com/hLJQCFvRUi
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 31, 2020
2014 FedEx Cup champion Billy Horschel was the final man in as he bumped Adam Long by virtue of moving up enough spots on the leaderboard when Corey Connors three-putted from 5 feet for double bogey on No. 18.
Tiger Woods needed a solo 4th place finish to advance to Atlanta, but a tie for 51st gives him next week off and likely means the next time we will see the 15-time major champion will be at the U.S. Open at Winged Foot that gets underway on Sept. 17th.
“This golf course was basically a U.S. Open, with the rough being as high as it is and fairways a little bit narrow,” Woods said. “Look at the scores, and I don’t think that we’ve seen scores like this in a non-major in a very long time. This was a great ramp-up for me for the U.S. Open. I wish I was playing next week, but I’ve got a couple weeks off.”