World No. 1 Jon Rahm looks to take page out of Tiger Wood’s book as he eyes more success on PGA Tour

World No.1 Jon Rahm is adamant nobody can beat him when he is on top form but that he does not have to be at his best to win – and pointed to a valuable lesson from Tiger Woods.

Rahm enters this week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational on the PGA Tour on an enviable run of form that has seen him claim five wins in his last nine starts worldwide.

The last of those came just two weeks ago at The Genesis Invitational that also saw him return to top spot in the Official World Golf Rankings. However, the Spaniard has warned his rivals that he can still get the job done without his perfect game.

“The thing is, you don’t need to be firing on all cylinders to win,” said the Spaniard. “I actually had a conversation similar to this with Tiger. I asked him, Out of the 82 wins on the PGA Tour, I didn’t get into the other ones, how many times do you think you played your best all four days?

“And he said, Three at most…A lot of those Sundays he played his best, but the whole week, very few.”

Pressed on whether Woods was forthcoming as to where he felt he produced his complete game, Rahm revealed it was his epic nine-win season back at the turn of the century.

“Well, 2000 U.S. Open, 2000 Open Championship, and I think you can pick any other 2000 win,” said Rahm. “Those two, I kind of brought up and he said he agreed to those two. I don’t know about the other one.”

Woods won his first U.S. Open at Pebble Beach in 2000 by a record-setting 15 strokes but had to settle for an eight-shot victory at the Open Championship at St Andrews later the same year.

Asked when he had been able to conjure such consistency, Rahm rued the premature end to his challenge at the Memorial Tournament in 2021 when he was forced to withdraw after testing positive for Covid-19.

“Personally it’s a little bit different. I’ve gotten to enjoy a really good form of golf. The one time I can say I was firing on all cylinders I didn’t get to finish the tournament,” he recalled. “So I would have wished to see what that was like. It all depends on who you’re talking to and what level.

“A lot of us are such perfectionists that I think we play close to that A-plus game a lot, but we don’t give ourselves that, quite that grade for all four days. I think a lot of us probably, you know, that’s why probably Tiger said maybe just a few times in his career.”

He added: “There’s weeks where you think, Oh, this part of my game is great, this other part was amazing. But for every part of your game to be a hundred percent all four days, yeah, that’s nearly impossible to happen.”

Rahm will lock horns once again this week with Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler who have also topped the ranking this year in what has been a fascinating battle for supremacy.

“It’s been great,” he said. “There’s a lot of satisfaction that comes to it when you get to be No. 1 when the other players have been playing great golf as well. Scottie had a great year last year, Rory had a great year last year, and then towards the end of the year I kind of picked up.

“And even with Scottie winning at Phoenix, I was able to get to No. 1 right after. So there’s a lot of satisfaction that comes to it. I mean, if you’re going to do it in any way, you want to get to No. 1 but winning. I think one of those times it was after JT [Justin Thomas] had a bad finish, and I finished 10th in a tournament and you get back to No. 1. That doesn’t feel nearly as well. But when we’ve been playing the way we’ve been playing, it’s a lot of fun.”

Despite his recent run of success, Rahm is well aware he has a long way to go if he is to match Woods’ dominance at the top of the rankings.

“Obviously Tiger had those two stretches of 250 weeks. Pretty much anytime one of us gets to No. 1, I hear I ‘would have to be No. 1 until 2035 or something like that, in a row, to reach Tiger’s record’, which is great,” joked Rahm.

“But I do know this is the most amount of No. 1 changes in this short period of time. I saw some of those stats because it’s just really interesting, which speaks to the greatness of the game of golf right now, how good everybody’s been playing.”