PGA Championship 2017: The lesson learned from Jon Rahm’s bumpy major season

Streeter Lecka(Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)CHARLOTTE — Jon Rahm has been a pro for 14 months. Let that marinate for a second. Just 22, with two worldwide wins on the season, he is making his tournament debut at the PGA Championship. Got it? Exhale.
As noted earlier this week, golf's hype machine can get overheated. An opinion embodied by Rahm. With his victory at Torrey Pines—along with a handful of impressive outings at Pebble Beach, Phoenix, Mexico and Austin—many liked Rahm to break the Masters' rookie slump. Those prospects were amplified at Erin Hills, its length, open confines and elevated greens seemingly suited to the Spaniard's game. Same goes for Birkdale after he took Ireland by storm.
Yet, with one day of major-championship play left in 2017, it's safe to say those major ambitions were overzealous, as Rahm needs a Sunday charge just to record his first top-25 major finish as a professional.
As conveyed above, this is not a knock on Rahm's c..

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PGA Championship 2017: Quail Hollow member Webb Simpson says “setup has been too tough for a PGA”

Icon SportswireCHARLOTTE, NC – AUGUST 11: Webb Simpson eyes his putt on the 10th green during 2nd round action at the PGA Championship at the Quail Hollow Club on August 11, 2017 in Charlotte, NC. (Photo by Doug Buffington/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)Firmed up greens, thick rough, and difficult pin positions turned moving day at the 99th PGA Championship into more of a stalemate. And Quail Hollow member Webb Simpson, for one, questioned his home course's setup for the year's final major.
“The setup has been too tough for a PGA, to be honest,” Simpson said following a third-round 72 that left him at five over for the tournament.
Simpson's quote was part of a series of comments in which he explained that this year's PGA felt more like a U.S. Open. Here's what else the four-time PGA Tour winner had to say.
“I could tell starting a few weeks back they were growing the rough up. I don't know if the intent to make it this difficult, but it's really har..

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PGA Championship 2017: Watch Graham DeLaet nearly make an ace on a par-4 at Quail Hollow

Moving day at the PGA Championship hasn't been as thrilling as the wild third rounds that the U.S. Open and Open Championship provided. One might say we were spoiled.
But Graham DeLaet nearly saved the day with what would have been a historic shot at Quail Hollow's14th hole. The PGA set up the short par-4 to be drivable today, and players are taking dead aim. DeLaet brought new meaning to “dead aim” with his tee shot:
https://twitter.com/PGATOUR/status/896474560840839168
Not only a near ace on a par-4, but the Canadian only needed 3-wood to almost jar it. Useful, useful shot. DeLaet, who made par in the first and second round at 14, tapped in for his eagle-2.
Had it dropped, it would have been just the second hole-in-one on a par-4 recorded in PGA Tour history, the first coming at the 2001 Phoenix Open when Andrew Magee did it on the 17th hole at TPC Scottsdale. And to think, it was almost the second in under a month.
RELATED: Louis Oosthuizen's shot against a tree trunk..

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Jordan Spieth: “The PGA Championship is going to be the toughest for me”

CHARLOTTE—With Jordan Spieth's career Grand Slam bid all but finished this week at Quail Hollow, he had some interesting quotes about his future hopes of winning the PGA Championship after his third-round 71 on Saturday.
It appears the 24-year-old is resigned that the PGA of America's flagship event might not be best-suited for his game.
https://twitter.com/GD_MikeO/status/896471526765203456
To be fair, if his record is any indication, Spieth might be right. The three-time major champion played tremendous golf at the 2015 PGA Championship at Whistling Straits before Jason Day ran away with it, but aside from that, he has two MCs to go along with a T-13 at Baltusrol last year.
PGA Championships have favored long hitters recently, with the past couple PGAs (Baltusrol, Valhalla, Quail Hollow) seeing wet conditions. That's not exactly Spieth's strength, but the required length shouldn't rule him out. His putter wasn't on all week, having way more to do with hi..

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Thieves steal more than $100,000 worth of golf clubs/equipment from clubfitter’s mobile trailer

This is a worst nightmare if you're a clubfitter. One of Golf Digest's 100 Best Clubfitters, Bronson Wright, reported that his mobile-fitting trailer carrying more than $100,000 worth of golf clubs and equipment — including launch monitors, top-end shafts, clubheads and custom clubs — was broken into on Thursday in San Francisco.
“We had everything stolen,” Wright said in an Instagram post.
Wright's company, The Club Fix, has eight locations in the U.S., in addition to this tour trailer, where the company can perform fittings on the road. And apparently, criminals targeted the truck in a costly theft.
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RELATED: The best golf clubs of 2017WATCH: GOLF DIGEST VIDEOS

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Schubert, Valenzuela put the women back in Women’s Amateur final

FacebookPinterestSteven GibbonsSophia Schubert plays her tee shot on the fourth hole during the semifinal round of match play at the 2017 U.S. Women's Amateur at San Diego Country Club. (Copyright USGA/Steven Gibbons)

CHULA VISTA, Calif. — The stubborn precocious kids who threatened to hijack another U.S. Women’s Amateur have finally been expelled, allowing actual women to vie for the women’s championship.
Sophia Schubert, 21, a University of Texas senior, defeated a 13-year-old, Chia Yen Wu of Chinese Tapei, 2 up, in one semifinal match at San Diego Country Club on Saturday.
In Sunday’s 36-hole final, Schubert will play Albane Valenzuela of Switzerland, a 19-year-old Stanford sophomore, who defeated Lilia Kha-Tu Vu, 3 and 2.
It is the first time since 2008 that two college players will meet in the final and the first time since then that the Women’s Amateur can be won by someone who is not a teenager.
Schubert had defeated a 16-year-old, Isabela Fiero, in the quarterfinals and a..

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Spieth’s mystery supporter: An elderly cousin he hasn’t met has been pulling hard for him

The beautiful needlepoint items created by Alice Buckley are not only functional masterpieces that bring pleasure to the eye and amazement in how they are made, but there is great symbolism. The weaving of the thread mimics how our lives can be intertwined in a stunning pattern that leaves us in awe.
At age 96, Alice has pretty much seen it all, so being awed is a tough task. But she is finding it amazing and emotional that a golf wunderkind she is related to but hasn’t met is stunning the golf world. Jordan Spieth, at the just-turned age of 24, in return might find it exciting to know an unknown near centenarian from his ancestry is pulling for him. He will need her support if he is to dig out of the hole he’s in at the PGA this weekend in his attempt to win the career Grand Slam.
FacebookPinterestI met Alice by chance on a recent visit my wife and I made to East Moline, Ill.—the Quad Cities-area town and land of the John Deere Classic—to spend time with my in-laws, Mary Ellen and Bil..

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