Crenshaw was a student of golf history and surely knew that Bobby Jones was also a believer in fate and wrote that most other top golfers were as well. Call it fate, call it luck, call it whatever you like, but you need some good breaks to win in this game. Luck is very much a part of the game of golf and you have to accept that sometimes the golfing gods will smile on you; and sometimes they won't.
This week at the DP World Tour Championship it looked, after nine holes into the final round, that Justin Rose was going to cruise to a win. He seemed to have things on auto-pilot. But the golfing gods, it seems, had other ideas. Justin lost the magic and Jon Rahm stepped up and got the job done to send a message to the world, in case they didn't already know, that he is going to be a big star in this game.
Perhaps it wasn't necessarily fate that Rose should lose the plot and Rahm win. But it was definitely providential that it should happen this way. The European Tour had announced, prior to this week's tournament, that Jon Rahm was the rookie of the year. There were some who were critical of this announcement, despite the fact that Rahm had cinched the award based upon the amount of cash he had made in his limited appearances in European Tour events. Money was apparently the measure to be used when determining the winner, and no other rookie, regardless of how they did this week, was in a position to catch Rahm. He'd won it fair and square. But this didn't stop some people--who can remain nameless; they know who they are--from bellyaching about Rahm being announced as the Rookie of the Year.
So, for Rahm to go out and win the Tour Championship was, at the very least, poetic justice. If it wasn't fate, it was certainly a big "up yours" to his critics. And perhaps it was fate. I'm also a big believer in fate; and I suspect young Mr. Rahm just might be fated to be Spain's next great champion.
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