Jon Rahm Sinks Epic 66-Footer To Pull Within Two Of Dustin Johnson's Tour Championship Lead

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Oh, and that amazing putt helped Rahm claim the BMW Championship in a thrilling finish over Dustin Johnson, who also made a doozy to send the tournament into overtime.

But I digress. Why focus on the BMW when the real story is next week’s Thursday leaderboard? While we’re in the midst of this playoff let’s send it down to Steve Sands for more. Will JT be four back or two back next Friday? Could Rahm cut into his deficit next week with a win this week? Inquiring minds do not need to know.

Fourteen years into this FedExCup, we’re still subjected to the hard sell. I realize there is a gargantuan sum of money at stake. And a season-long sponsor demanding full value for their investment even at the expense of other sponsors trying to have their moment. Yet once again, a compelling final round on a penalizing parkland course was mostly overshadowed by the effort to push FedExCup narratives that no sane individual cares about in the best of times. During a pandemic, it’s nails-on-the-chalkboard stuff. Especially with a fascinating final round featuring a better-than-most variety of characters.

As NBC’s Paul Azinger noted on Saturday, the FedExCup is a “pretty prestigious” competition. That was an apparently slight he mopped up, undoubtedly after an 904 area code popped-up on someone’s phone. This overall demand to focus on the perennially lame “playoff’ race was more of a shame than normal. The NBC team really never got to go deep on any topic or even do something mildly in-depth on the difficult setup conditions. There were just too many non-BMW obligations to juggle.

Even Mackenzie Hughes’s putt to get into the Tour Championship, while dramatic, felt like NBC’s team turning it into Ouimet beating Vardon and Ray. The hard sell brings down genuinely great moments.

Producer Tommy Roy was working without several once-normal production values that would have made this “playoff” event better. Yet the final putt replay sequence was vintage NBC stuff, yet not having an aerial shot of a few key tee shots getting amazing kicks off of trees turned out to be a huge storytelling miss we’re not used to with NBC. Particularly with CBS now mastering that element over the last 11 weeks and Winged Foot looming in two weeks, we can only hope the accountants loosen some purse strings. (NBC’s 2006 U.S. Open coverage was so epic in part thanks to aerial’s of Phil’s 18th hole adventure.)

Mercifully on this Sunday, we had Dustin Johnson and Jon Rahm to thank for an unforgettable 2020 BMW finish.

Their absurdly long putts are embedded below and Daniel Rapaport covers all of Rahm and Johnson’s reactions here at GolfDigest.com. If you just have to know what the Tour Championship leaderboard looks like Friday morning (Labor Day finish), Ben Everill has it in this FedExCup points race roundup.

Take a look at the ShotLink scatter chart for the 18th green Sunday and note how there was no birdie putt resembling what Rahm made. Johnson’s make in regulation is highlighted in the second slide followed by a clean slide showing the 18th hole birdies in regulation: