Jon Rahm wins the CareerBuilder Challenge and it’s just the beginning of a huge 2018

The PGA Tour jumps back to the continental U.S. this week for the start of the West Coast swing. The annual stop in Palm Springs is now known as the CareerBuilder Challenge. The golden days of the Bob Hope Classic pro-am being one of the marquee events on the PGA Tour schedule are long gone. This event has struggled in its early season slot and in finding a host or a brand-name face like Hope to really give it pop and stand out on the crowded schedule, especially within a loaded West Coast swing.

The field is not strong and the venues — a rotating cast of three courses — are a bit meh. This has been lost in the shuffle of the packed schedule and is really struggling for an identity in recent years. There are, however, still some stars on hand and a few reasons to take in the third event of the year before things really ramp up next week at Torrey Pines with the return of Tiger Woods.

Here are your nuts and bolts as well as why you should watch the CareerBuilder Challenge. We’ll keep this updated with scores, highlights, news, and updated tee times as the week progresses in the Coachella Valley.

Final Results

Golf is a stupidly unpredictable sport. The world rankings demonstrate excellence over extended stretches but it’s close to impossible to predict the actual winners in a single week. These fields are 156 deep with the most razor thin margins between every player in the field. And then there’s just the general fickle nature of the sport, where bounces and rolls and bumps change the course of every round and maybe every hole.

But this week, the headliner, the highest ranked player in the field, and the guy favored to win, went out and won it. Jon Rahm completed a Sunday chasedown, coming from two shots back of Austin Cook at the start of the day and then beating Andrew Landry in a four-hole playoff.

Rahm is a stud, a potential future world No. 1 and likely a major winner, multiple major winner. He’s continuing to set an absurd pace — he should not be winning this much, climbing the world rankings this fast, and adjusting so well to being among the five or six best players in the world. Only five players had a better final round than Rahm’s Sunday 67.

The big Spaniard is just getting started. Everything we’ve seen to this point has shown he makes quick work of achieving the next level in a career most would dream about being at the sunrise of. The CareerBuilder Challenge win may be long forgotten this summer with bigger things on the horizon. Here are your final results from the Cali desert:

Why Watch

1) It’s golf. Listen, I am not going to fill up this section every week trying to fake it with a bunch of reasons why you must watch such-and-such event. The CareerBuilder Challenge has receded in prestige and, power and it’s one of the schedule’s lower-tier events now. The field is actually weaker than this week’s European Tour event, the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship. The PGA Tour having a weaker field strength than the Euro Tour happens only a couple times a year. So I’d forgive you if you decided to read a book, hang with friends and family, go skiing, or play outside in the snow. But it’s still golf and it will be there to comfort and warm you up when you need it. Now here are a few more legitimate reasons to maybe tune in this week.

2) FIGJAM Returns. Once more into the breach. Phil Mickelson is back and the 47-year-old is (probably) going to tell you he’s never felt better, he’s never been more focused, and big things lie ahead in 2018. That may be. We know it will be entertaining and adventurous and thrilling and maybe heartbreaking at times. It’s been almost five years since Phil won, that legendary Sunday at Muirfield to take The Open in the summer of 2013. Tiger Woods, who had multiple back surgeries in those intervening years, has actually won more recently than Phil.

Phil trying to end this drought, make a Ryder Cup team for the 11th straight time, and stay competitive with all the 20-something bombers remains one of the most fascinating watches in the game. We haven’t seen him in three months. He’s 47 and will likely be at least competitive into his 50s, but the time left on this Phil experience is ticking down. Here’s another opportunity to take it in after a three-month absence.

Photo by Jeff Gross/Getty Images

3) Rahmthreat. Jon Rahm is on the the opposite end of Phil. Another ASU product that’s coming through 25 years later with a potential Hall of Fame career in front of him. Rahm’s rise up the world rankings in his first full season on Tour was historically speedy. The Spaniard is No. 4 in the world and is just going to stay there in that top 10 for the next decade or so. His short backswing on the way to nuking 330-yard drives is one of the best to watch in the game. Following a runner-up in Maui and with a weaker field in Palm Springs, this could be the week he picks off an early season win.

4) Birdiefests and #59Watches. Like the Sony Open last week, this is another event that can yield the magic round of breaking 60. Adam Hadwin did it just a year ago here. David Duval did it at this event when it was the Bob Hope and breaking 60 was a much, much harder thing to do. It’s perfectly fine — and can be fun! — to occasionally have a week that’s a birdiefest every now and then, and 20-something-under is probably going to win it this week.

How to Watch

The first stop on the West Coast swing is the only one that’s exclusively covered on Golf Channel. The cable network will have all four rounds before spending the rest of the year splitting coverage with CBS or its sister network NBC on the weekends.

Each broadcast runs through the same coverage window all four days. Golf Channel’s technicians are still on strike after spending much of Tuesday negotiating a new deal, according to Martin Kaufmann of Golfweek. Golf Channel has contingency plans in place for the CareerBuilder, so it’s unlikely we’ll get the mad-dash scramble that we watched on Sunday at the Sony Open. This should approximate a normal, more professional production but it’s still not ideal to have the regulars and experts sitting out on strike.

This week also marks the return of PGA TOUR LIVE, the tour’s over-the-top streaming service that now has a couple full seasons under its belt. Now that we’re on the continental U.S., it will be here to stay for the rest of the year. It’s a good service, even if it now costs money for something that was free in a previous generation. The stream quality is close to perfect and it is the only way to watch the bigger names on Thursday and Friday mornings. It returns this week, however, with some featured groups that are ... underwhelming.

On the weekend, it’s all Golf Channel. The PGA TOUR Live operation goes away and ships off to San Diego for the Farmers Insurance Open. Here’s your full media schedule for the final round:

Sunday’s final round coverage

Television:

3 to 7 p.m. — Golf Channel

Online streams:

3 to 7 p.m. — Golf Channel simulcast stream

Radio:

2 to 7 p.m. — PGA Tour Radio on Sirius-XM (Ch. 92/208 and streamed here)

Sunday Tee Times

This is one of three events on the West Coast swing that spreads out across multiple courses. There are obviously a lot of golf courses in the Palm Springs and Coachella Valley area. This week, the PGA Tour uses three. The limited daylight hours, a full field, and a pro-am component (which take forrreverrr) make it necessary to rotate courses to get in 72 holes in four days.

Sunday is the first day with the field cut down and everything moves to the PGA West Stadium course. It’s a mix of pros and amateurs, with those concurrent competitions running. So there will be a few Ams mixed in on the tee sheet — for example, that’s why it looks like Sam Ryder is out there as a solo. Here’s your tee sheet for Sunday, with the Tour sending them off split tees.

All times ET.

PGA West TPC Stadium

No. 1 Tee

• 11:35 a.m.: Richy Werenski, Rob Oppenheim, Brendan Steele
• 11:45 a.m.: Aaron Wise, Lucas Glover, Harris English
• 11:55 a.m.: Brian Gay, Ben Crane, Corey Conners
• 12:05 p.m.: Kevin Streelman, Peter Uihlein, Patton Kizzire
• 12:15 p.m.: Rory Sabbatini, Zach Johnson, Nick Watney
• 12:25 p.m.: Hudson Swafford, Trey Mullinax, Russell Knox
• 12:35 p.m.: Ricky Barnes, Andrew Putnam, Hunter Mahan
• 12:45 p.m.: Ryan Palmer, Brian Harman, Tyrone Van Aswegen
• 12:55 p.m.: Kevin Chappell, Stewart Cink, Charles Howell III
• 1:05 p.m.: John Huh, Kevin Kisner, Michael Kim
• 1:15 p.m.: Seamus Power, Jhonattan Vegas, Bronson Burgoon
• 1:25 p.m.: Grayson Murray, Brandon Harkins, Jason Kokrak
• 1:35 p.m.: Scott Piercy, Jon Rahm, Adam Hadwin
• 1:45 p.m.: Austin Cook, Andrew Landry, Martin Piller

No. 10 Tee

• 11:35 a.m.: Billy Hurley III, Bud Cauley, Sung Kang
• 11:45 a.m.: Beau Hossler, James Hahn, Sam Saunders
• 11:55 a.m.: Brett Stegmaier, Nate Lashley, Talor Gooch
• 12:05 p.m.: Alex Cejka, Webb Simpson, John Peterson
• 12:15 p.m.: Tom Whitney, Kevin Na, Matt Every
• 12:25 p.m.: Abraham Ancer, Chesson Hadley, Chez Reavie
• 12:35 p.m.: David Lingmerth, Derek Fathauer, Sean O’Hair
• 12:45 p.m.: Ben Martin, Smylie Kaufman, Scott Brown
• 12:55 p.m.: Jason Dufner, Keith Mitchell
• 1:05 p.m.: Ben Silverman, Robert Garrigus
• 1:15 p.m.: Brice Garnett, Nick Taylor
• 1:25 p.m.: Tom Hoge, Chris Stroud
• 1:35 p.m.: Tom Lovelady, Wesley Bryan
• 1:45 p.m.: Sam Ryder

Scores

We’ll update scores at the end of each day and recap each round here throughout the event.

Your leader after 18 holes is the highest ranked player in the field, Jon Rahm. The Spaniard was obviously one of the favorites this week in a weaker field and all he did is go out on Thursday and throw down a 10-under 62 at La Quinta Country Club. That’s the course that played the easiest in this three-course rotation, almost a half-stroke easier than the PGA West Nicklaus Tournament course and almost 2.5 strokes easier than the PGA West Stadium course.

Phil Mickelson did not make his hay on that La Quinta opportunity, but said after the round he can never seem to play well there and actually bucks the trend, going lower at the other two courses. Mickelson is 2-under and in a tie for 88th place.

This is an event where you have to keep the pedal down. It’s almost like a Web.com Tour event in that regard — you need to pile up birdies and work toward a score of 20-under if you want to contend. Only 31 of the 156-man field is even or worse, and only 18 out of 156 players are over par. You just gotta go low or you have no chance.

Round 2 Scores

Andrew Landry is your 36-hole leader in the desert, posting a 7-under 65 to get to 16-under for the tournament. Landry is a name you might recognize from the 2016 U.S. Open at Oakmont, where he came out of nowhere to contend into Sunday at the national championship. Landry spoke that week about the hot streaks he can get on and he’s apparently found one this week.

Rahm is now one shot back of Landry and is your favorite to win at the midpoint. The big Spaniard posted a 5-under 67 on Friday afternoon. There’s no reason to think that birdie trend won’t continue throughout the weekend.

There’s no Friday night cut at the CareerBuilder because of the three-course rotation. So every player gets 54 holes and a chance to go low and make a move onto the right side of the cut line before Sunday’s final round at the PGA West Stadium course. Here are your Friday night scores:

Round 3 Scores

Conditions changed and toughened a bit for the third round, with temperatures dropping and the wind coming up in the Coachella Valley area. Austin Cook, who already has a win this season from the wraparound portion of the schedule, is your 54-hole leader. Cook is a rookie with loads of talent and the ability to go on birdie runs so it’s no surprise to see him playing well in this kind of event. He was schooled on the Web Tour, where you have to keep the pedal down and go low every day to competer. The CareerBuilder is the same kind of birdiefest.

Rahm is still lurking just two shots back and the biggest name on the leaderboard. Sunday has already seen wins by Sergio Garcia and Tommy Fleetwood. A win for Rahm would have Euro Ryder Cup captain Thomas Bjorn feeling pretty good early in this year.