Patrick Cantlay drained a 12 foot par putt in a playoff to win the Memorial Championship on a truly bizarre Sunday. While Cantlay will be the one bringing home the hardware, most of the talk was still focused on Jon Rahm. Rahm, who had built a 6 stroke lead after shooting a sizzling 64 on Saturday, had his hopes of claiming his 13th PGA victory come crashing down around him when he was greeted by tournament officials at the 18th green.
When tournament officials come your way in a golf round, it’s never a good sign. Unfortunately for Rahm, who was expecting some sort of penalty to be added to his round, was instead informed that his COVID test came back positive, effectively knocking him out of the tournament and leaving the field, and fans alike in shock.
When asked about the odd victory Cantlay told reporters “I would much rather have faced him down today and shot an extremely low round and beat him that way…But unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do…I did everything I could with the cards I was dealt, and I really did a good job of focusing today on the task at hand and staying present. And that’s all you can do in this game.”
PGA Tour officials noted that Rahm had been in close contact with a confirmed positive case, and was therefore put in their contact tracing program. As part of the protocols, Rahm was subject to daily testing, all of which came back clean until Saturday. When his first sample came back positive, a PGA Tour medical official requested a confirmatory test, which also came back positive. Meaning that shortly after tying the 54 hole course record, Rahm was informed that he would be forced to withdraw from the event.
Despite being asymptomatic, the positive results also means that Rahm will need to self isolate until Tuesday June 15th at the earliest per CDC guidelines. This timeline will however allow Rahm to compete in the US Open which runs June 17-20th at Torrey Pines.
Rahm becomes only the fourth positive case on the PGA over 50 events since the tour resumed play and is the first positive asymptomatic case discovered as part of the PGA’s contact tracing protocols. While Cantlay certainly deserves full marks for his gutsy performance to pull off the victory, one can’t help but feel for the talented Spaniard who was 18 holes away from winning one of the more illustrious non-major events on the PGA calendar.