Jon Rahm is not the story at the Farmers Insurance Open this week, and won’t be any sooner than Saturday, even though he’s defending champion, even if he’s leading the tournament, even if he did supplant Jordan Spieth at No. 2 in the World Goffin’ Rankings with a playoff victory last weekend at the CareerBuilder Challenge.
Rahm is 23, media-friendly, strong and long and a good putter. He has a chance of being the best Spaniard ever to play the game. That’s all nice, but I tend to like to watch players ranked in the mid-to-high three digits: the scufflers, the journeymen, way down there like 647th in the world.
Number six four seven won’t win at Torrey Pines (you read it here nowhere near first), but if he makes the cut he’ll own the headlines no matter what World No. 2 or anybody else is doing.
No. 647 didn’t play last week and he had a better week than Tom Petty, who isn’t playing anywhere anymore. An autopsy showed there were only seven drugs in Petty’s system at the time of his Oct. 3 death, which I wouldn’t think ranks him very high all-time on the Rock ‘n’ Roll Overdose Death List. But he went big — fentanyl patches, Oxycontin, temazepam (Restoril), Xanax, citalopram (Celexa), acetyl fentanyl and despropionyl fentanyl. He must have been in pain — fentanyl three ways?
Pain, or the lack of it, or managing it when it happens, will be factors much in play when 647 swings a club this weekend. Does he have the number for Petty’s doctor?
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