Jon Rahm Says He’d Be “Lost” If He Thought Like Phil
- Updated: January 18, 2018
Every good golfer has a preshot routine. For some guys, it’s grip it and rip it. Others prefer to be more deliberate (we’re looking at you Jason Day) … then there’s Phil Mickelson and his scientific method. Lefty is known to analyze the most minute details that range from air temperature to the amount of moisture on the grass, and he’s been doing it for years.
Enter Jon Rahm, the current world no. 3. The 23-year-old is among a new breed of superstars who just see the shot and react to it … aka being athletic. Rahm and Phil play a lot of practice rounds together given that they are both repped by the same agency/are ASU grads. Quite frankly, the young Spaniard doesn’t know how the old vet does it.
“I don’t need much. ‘OK, it’s like 120 (yards), this shot, right,” Rahm said on Wednesday at the CareerBuilder Challenge when asked what it’s like to play with the Hall of Famer. “And then you have Phil, it’s like, ‘Oh, this shot, the moisture, this going on, this is like one mile an hour wind sideways, it’s going to affect it one yard. This green is soft, this trajectory. They’re thinking, and I’m like, ‘I’m lost.’ I’m like, ‘God if I do that thought process, I could not hit a golf shot.'”
HA …. typical millennial response. But seriously, who wouldn’t be lost?! I can barely calculate the yardage after pacing it off the nearest sprinkler head. However, Rahm knows he’s fortunate to learn from a living legend.
“It’s funny, he gets to the green and then it’s the same thing. He’s very detail-oriented,” Rahm said of Mickelson. “I’m there listening and I’m like, ‘Man, I hope we’re never paired together for anything because I can’t think like this. I would not be able to play golf like that. But for me to listen to all that is really fun.”
