Jon Rahm feels the heat at Augusta Masters 2023 as Spaniard suffers a difficult start at the tournament

Jon Rahm is in the midst of an impressive stretch of winning. To start the PGA Tour season this year, he was as good as he's ever been and as good as anyone in the world right now. He rose to world number one for a brief while.

Coming into the Masters in 2023, many expected him to compete well. That has simply not been the case on day one of the major. He four-putted the first hole of the tournament to get off to an unbelievably inauspicious start.

It was a poor start, though he's rectified it a bit already. He can likely ill afford anymore setbacks, though, as he's going to have to continue playing very well for all four days to get to the final hole with a shot at victory.

Rahm entered the tournament with the third-best odds of winning it all:

Scottie Scheffler +650
Rory McIlroy +750
Jon Rahm +800
Cameron Smith +1400
Jordan Spieth +1400
Justin Thomas +1500
Will Zalatoris +1600
Collin Morikawa +1600
Max Homa +1600
Xander Schauffele +2000
Patrick Cantlay +2000
Sam Burns +2500
Jason Day +2500
Tony Finau +2800
Sungjae Im +2800
Dustin Johnson +2800
Viktor Hovland +2800
Cameron Young +3000
Brooks Koepka +3000
Joohyung (Tom) Kim +3300
Hideki Matsuyama +3500
Matthew Fitzpatrick +3500
Joaquin Niemann +4000

Rahm is going to have to turn things around to have a chance at doing so. He began at about eight-to-one to win it all and has plummeted to 20-to-one with current odds.

Can Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler be the next big three?

Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and Scottie Scheffler are in the midst of incredible runs. They're playing as well as they ever have. The only reason each one of them isn't the runaway best player in the world is because of the other two.

They're being compared to Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh as the new "big three". Rahm responded to that via the Star Tribune:

"I would say you can say that if we can do it for at least five, or five-plus, years, like so many of those players did. Even when Tiger was on his run in the 2000s, Phil and Vijay [Singh] still managed to win [many] times themselves in that time frame. So I think for us to be compared to something like that, we have a very long way to go. This could be the start. But still a long way to go."

Scheffler, who is chasing some history himself, added:

"Legacy is not really why I play. Any time you can get mentioned in the same breath as a Tiger and a Jack and a Nick Faldo is really special, but it's not a motivating factor for me to come out here and play. Legacy is just a complicated thing. In a hundred years I'm going to be forgotten and it's not a big deal."

Can one of those three take home a green jacket this year?

About the author

Zachary is a journalist covering NFL, Professional Golf, esports, and Major League Baseball at Sportskeeda. He has a degree in writing/editing from Southern Adventist University (USA), and in his spare time, he likes to play games such as Minecraft, Pokémon and Fortnite, or watch sports.

Ever since he was a youth football wide receiver, Zachary has been an avid NFL fan. He loves the Carolina Panthers, with Cam Newton being his all-time favorite player (with respect to the close second, Steve Smith). If you ever meet Zachary, prepare to hear all about how underrated Newton was and how he single-handedly dragged the Panthers to Super Bowl 50.

Zachary is also a big fan of top golfers like Tiger Woods, Wyndham Clark, and Scottie Scheffler. He enjoys watching them and hopes that Woods can return to form soon and win again.

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Edited by Tejas Rathi