The Limerick Summary: 2019 Zurich Classic

Winner: Jon Rahm & Ryan Palmer

Around the wider world of golf: Jorge Campillo got his first ET win at the Trophée Hassan II; also in Morocco, Nuria Iturrios won the Lalla Meryem Cup on the LET; Tom Pernice Jr. and Scott Hoch won the Bass Pro Shops Legends of Golf on the Champions Tour; Xinjun Zhang won the Dormie Network Classic on the Web.com Tour; Tom Whitney won the 88th Abierto OSDE del Centro on the PGA TOUR Latinoamérica; Minjee Lee won the Hugel-Air Premia LA Open on the LPGA; Cydney Clanton (from NC!) won the Murphy USA El Dorado Shootout on the Symetra Tour; and Yuka Yasuda won the Women’s Amateur Asia-Pacific Championship by a very decisive eight shots.



Tuesday Twofer picks continue to challenge my sanity. I picked Kevin Kisner and Scott Brown (T5) to win and Henrik Stenson and Graeme McDowell (T18) to Top10. At least Kiz and Brown gave me a Top10; I take some solace from that.

• Winners: 2 for 17
• Place well (Top10): 9 for 17 (5 Top5 finish, 4 more Top10s)
• Overall Top10s: 18 of 34 (9 Top5s, 9 more Top10s)

But my poor record was no consolation for the field at the Zurich Classic. Team play like this is notoriously hard to pick, simply because we have little or no history for the teams involved. Such was the problem with the winning team of Jon Rahm and Ryan Palmer. Their previous partners -- Wesley Bryan and Jordan Spieth, respectively -- were unavailable and Ryan expressed his own surprise that "Rahmbo" agreed to play with him.

Both men are glad he did though, and the remainder of the field may never recover from the emotional scars of their dominating performance. The two fourball rounds of 64 probably didn't surprise anyone; rounds of 60 aren't unusual in that format.

It was the two alternating-shot rounds that decimated their opponents. The 65 they shot in the on-again, off-again second round was the best in the field and, while Sunday's 69 wasn't the best, it was easily enough to best their pursuers. Their relentless fairway-green-hole-the-putt play just kept them moving ahead of the field and they walked up the final fairway with a three-shot lead.

And Rahm's comment in the post-round interviews that Jordan and Wesley would just have to find new partners next year couldn't have settled that well on their shocked victims.

Ryan may not have won in nearly a decade, but his game -- and especially his putter -- proved that he and Jon can be a potent team. So this year they receive their first joint Limerick Summary... and the PGA Tour begins calculating their part of the medical bill for all the counseling the other pros are going to need.

When Ryan and Rahmbo destroyed
The field down at Zurich, they toyed
With the psyches of all—
And left so many mauled
That the Tour has employed Sigmund Freud.

The photo came from this page at fox8live.com.