Rahm as perplexed as the rest of us with his Masters week

AUGUSTA, Ga. – On a weekend in which he hoped to make some leaderboard noise, Jon Rahm instead hit the let’s-work-on-a-few-things phase of his perplexing Masters week. 

The 2023 Masters champ shot a 1-over 73 in Saturday’s third round, leaving him at 5 over through 54 holes and tied for 48th among the 54 players in the field who made the cut. 

Unless he moves inside the top 45 after Sunday’s final round, it will be his worst result in his 10 career Masters starts. 

“The only thing about a weekend like today, once things are not going well enough, is you can start trying things just to see how it feels or how you can do it in competition,” Rahm said. “Just a bit of what I did today. Probably what I'll do tomorrow. Hitting it on the range is one thing; doing it on the golf course is a different thing.” 

It’s not the position he expected to be in, especially given his strong start to the 2026 LIV Golf season with one win, three seconds and a fifth in the first five tournaments that has him in first place in the season-long Individual Championship points race, which he’s won in each of his first two LIV Golf seasons. 

But an opening 6-over 78 – in which the Legion XIII captain acknowledged losing the feel of his swing – left him scrambling just to make a cut. Friday’s 2-under 70 got him to the weekend but 16 shots off Rory McIlroy’s 36-hole lead and needing a couple of Hail Mary low rounds just to make things interesting. 

He birdied two of his first three holes Saturday but failed to convert a 16-footer at the par-5 2nd. Still, he had a 9-foot birdie attempt after a terrific tee shot at the par-3 fourth. But his missed putt seemed to take any remaining wind out of his sails, and he didn’t make another birdie until the 15th. 

Augusta National’s greens definitely were not his friend this week. On Thursday, he needed 33 putts; just seven of the 91 players in the field needed more. 

“I'll tell you one thing: My putting hasn't been the best,” Rahm said. “I've been putting the line the last two days – which I rarely ever do, right? – just to help me a little bit.” 

Asked why the week didn’t turn out the way he – or frankly anybody else in the golf world – expected, Rahm could only shrug. 

“If I knew the why, two things: Probably not going to say it right now, and I would have tried to avoid it if I knew the why I played the way I played so far,” he said, as perplexed as the rest of us.