How Jon Rahm's relentless rise has been inspired by Tiger Woods

After winning the Hero Golf Challenge on Sunday, Rahm shared a hug and a handshake with the man whose legacy has been the permanent mantle for his career

Rahm is hoping to follow in Woods' footsteps (AP)

“I’d love to play against Tiger. Scores are tied, Sunday singles, it’d be a dream to be able to compete against Tiger Woods for the Ryder Cup. That would be amazing – unless I lose,” John Rahm told The Independent in the weeks leading up to the Ryder Cup. “I don’t know if it would be the best moment of my career. I’ll tell you after.”

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Jon Rahm was a bulky four-year-old from the Basque Country when Tiger Woods won the US Open at Pebble Beach in 2000. Since then, Sunday’s Hero Golf Challenge champion has watched Woods’ historic back-nine over 150 times. And when the just-turned 24-year-old met his fiancée at Arizona State University, date nights consisted of streaming umpteen mash-ups of Woods’ greatest shots on YouTube.

So when on that champagne-soaked Sunday in Saint-Quentin-En-Yvelines, after 28 months of narrowly missing being partnered with him at PGA Tour events, Rahm was pitted against his “all-time hero” it seemed a typically theatric work of Ryder Cup fate.

For Rahm, winning that match on the 17th green at Le Golf National, beating the air in the direction of Guyancourt’s crowds and roaring volleys of ‘Vamos’ before turning to his hero in tears, was the culmination of a childhood forged by Woods’ legacy.

“I had to apologise [to Tiger],” Rahm said in his champion’s press conference on Sunday as he reflected publicly on the match for the first time. “I didn’t see he was coming to me and he came to me with a smile. He said, ‘Man, don’t even worry, you played great’, and I started crying in front of him. It was such an emotional moment.”

Yet to those who knew the overgrown 13-year-old from Barrika – already notorious for fierce drives and fits of rage – sitting behind a cigar-toting custard jumper bearing Miguel Angel Jimenez in Madrid’s famous golf academy, Rahm’s relentless rise was already predestined.

Only Sergio Garcia had won more national amateur titles than a 16-year-old Rahm, leading to Tim Mickelson, then working at Arizona State University, to blindly offer him a scholarship. A decision Mickelson almost regretted when Rahm disfigured his golf bag and contorted dialectic swearwords with colourful dexterity on his way to a 77 at his first tournament in Tempe – the 6’3” 230lbs heavyweight was forced to heave himself up and down the 56 steps of Arizona’s Sun Devil Stadium as punishment.

Rahm celebrates after defeating Woods in the singles in Paris (Getty)

But on the following two days, Rahm shot a combined 11-under par. And when he turned professional two-and-a-half years ago, Rahm was again second in the all-time winners’ list to only one man – Tim’s 43-time PGA Tour winning brother, Phil, boasting 16 college wins to Rahm’s 11.

In the 28 months as a professional since, Rahm has already won six events – the most of any golfer in that introductory timespan since his unknowing mentor Woods. In the 54 PGA Tour events he’s played, Rahm’s missed the cut just eight times and finished fourth in two of this year’s majors. Not until you fall 36 places below can you find someone younger than the Spaniard in the world rankings.

And as he capped such success with victory in the Bahamas on Sunday, Rahm shared a hug and a handshake with the man whose legacy has been the permanent mantle for his career at the aptly named Hero Challenge.

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“That Sunday with Tiger is the most emotional, most important moment of my golf career,” Rahm said, reminiscing on that defining moment in Paris. “I don’t think there’s anything I can do in the game anytime soon that’s going to mean more than that.

“It’s only right that a young Lion could take over a Tiger.”