LIV’s top golfers are gunning for a Masters clash

JOHANNESBURG – While something raucous is certainly building at the club in Steyn City, here at LIV South Africalooks like a LIV duel won’t be decided for another 23 days, and on another continent. LIV will field 11 golfers in the Masters field in three weeks, but how much will you bet to win? It might just be two … but maybe two of the top three.

Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau – by far the two biggest assets on the globe circuit – have been circling each other these past three weeks in different corners of the world. They will continue to do so over the next two days in Johannesburg, and someone may even lift the trophy. (DeChambeau leads by two. Rahm trails by three.) But regardless of what happens in South Africa, both are chasing arguably some of the best golf of their lives, just days before the first show of the year.

During a Masters-related conversation Tuesday morning, Rahm admitted that the form he feels now mimics where he was at the end of 2021 to 2022, or from the end of 2022 to 2023 – the two peaks that stood out to him during his career. Not so shockingly, he then earned his degree.

“I’d say in ’23, my iron game was probably as sharp as it got,” Rahm said. “The setting was maybe a little bit better. I don’t know what the stats say. I’m just going with what I feel. And the drive was good. I feel like I’ve driven it better so far this year.

“I’m feeling really, really good. That’s all I can say. I don’t know how to quantify it because it’s not always about winning.”

He certainly accomplished that. Rahm’s season started with a second place finish in Riyadh, followed up with another second in Australia and then felt like a real breakthrough when he finally won in Hong Kong. He tightened up enough from his game last week in Singapore to finish fifth alone. At the top of the leaderboard was DeChambeau.

DeChambeau’s burst of form has been much more recent. He feuded with Rahm (also in a missed attempt to Anthony Kim) in Australia before a T24 in Hong Kong. He then won in Singapore with what he called his “big golf championship”.

A few days later, he is now halfway to a wire-to-wire victory, two clear of the field. And what’s different about DeChambeau, when compared to Rahm, is that his form nirvana is much tighter. Instead of specifying specific years or months of a season, it mentions a very specific third and final round from August 2023.

“I feel like I’m getting closer to when I shot 58 at the Greenbrier,” DeChambeau said Saturday after his very easy 65, which featured a double bogey. “That’s what I’ve been trying to get back to. I lost it a little bit. I’ve been working with Dana (Dahlquist) and Sportsbox (AI) to figure out exactly what I did in ’23 at the Greenbrier. I feel like I’m getting close to it again.”

That 58 not only followed a 61 from his previous day, but saw him beat the LIV field average by nearly nine the blows. He finished 23 under in the 54-hole tournament and won by six.

“It was the greatest pace performance of my entire career,” he continued. “I remember being able to get up on the tee and not even think about anything and it would do exactly what I was seeing. It was like a video game for me for a while. I didn’t know exactly what I was doing, but I had just fallen into this pattern.”

DeChambeau gets starry-eyed when he thinks about that round, as if that 58 was a desperation of his passion. “You get to that place and it’s almost like nothing else matters,” he said Friday. But it was one of the first memorable moments of his partnership with current caddy Greg Bodine.

Bodine has been able to learn and speak DeChambeau so well that the two now feel inseparable as a competitive duo. They may not have gotten DeChambeau to the sensation of that West Virginia 58 since then, but they’ve won the US Open, competed in the PGA Championship and been good enough to earn a front-row seat in Sunday’s final round with Rory McIlroy at the last Masters. DeChambeau said earlier this week that he’s taken lessons since that tournament about how to hit it. He said he’s in the adjustment phase of Masters preparation, a little surprised it all came together last week. But then he shot 63-65 already this week. There may be no more tuning to do.