25 tournaments, 11 top ten finishes and 2 victories. Not a bad record for a 22-year-old with less than one year as a professional golfer. Jon Rahm may only be in his second season as a professional, but the young Spaniard is already taking the golfing world by storm. In 2017 he has finished in the top 10 in 8 out of 17 tournaments: nearly 50%. Wow!

Securing his second win of the calendar year, Rahm obliterated the field to finish with a course record -24 and a six shot lead. Closest rivals Richie Ramsay and Matthew Southgate, of Scotland and England respectively, were simply outclassed as Rahm shot a closing round of 65 which featured two eagles and five birdies. It was a string of four birdies in a row between the 7th-10th where the Spanish wonderkid showed us exactly what he is capable of.

Englishman Justin Rose finished T4 and Oliver Fisher and Tommy Fleetwood finished T10 to highlight a superb tournament for English golfers, which saw eight English flags between 1 and T20 on the leaderboard. The T10 finish is a huge step in the right direction for Tommy Fleetwood, who now leads the Race to Dubai, as he continues a sparkling 2017 which has seen multiple victories on the European Tour and a fourth-placed finish at the U.S. Open. Tournament host, World No. 4 Rory McIlroy, continued to struggle for form since his mega-money move deal with TaylorMade as he missed the cut on home soil.

Despite what the scoreline suggests, it wasn't all plain sailing for Jon Rahm in the Irish Open. A controversy surrounding his ball marking on the 6th green brewed up a torrent of arguments and abuse, particularly on social media. Most of the abuse wasn't directed at Rahm (few would argue that he would deliberately risk a penalty to move his ball a few millimetres for little to no benefit), but rather towards the European Tour's Senior Referee, Andy McFee, and his decision not to penalise Jon Rahm with a stroke penalty. A four-shot penalty was handed to Lexi Thompson at this year's ANA Inspiration for a very similar issue; two for misplacing her golf ball and two for incorrect scoring. The issues surrounding this ruling are well-documented and it would be fair to say that the referees did not deal with the decision in the correct manner- allowing a TV viewer to all but make their decision for them, handing out the penalty a day later and penalising incorrect scoring when she could not have possibly known it was incorrect (basically penalising her for being penalised).

There are two major differences to be taken into consideration with Jon Rahm's ruling. The first is that he had to mark his ball a putter's length away from the ball's spot in order to clear his partner, Daniel Im's, putting line; meaning it is slightly more understandable that he could have been off by a few millimetres and thus giving him more leeway from the referee. The other difference is that the rule was altered as a reaction to the controversy around Lexi Thompson's ruling. The rule alteration allowed a golfer to use 'reasonable judgement'- suggesting that a referee should be more lenient if the golfer appears to have done his best to place the ball correctly, which Rahm clearly did. This, in my most humble of opinions, justifies Mr McFee's decision not penalise the Spaniard.

On a lighter note, the Spanish superstar deserved his victory as he Rahm-paged (sorry, I couldn't resist!) to a course record less than a fortnight before The Open Championship. Will we see Spanish success at a major for the second time this year? An eighth straight maiden major victor?

It would take a fool to bet against Jon Rahm in Britain's major on the 20th July.

Jon Rahm - What's in the Bag?

Driver- TaylorMade M2

Fairway Wood- TaylorMade M1

Irons- TaylorMade RSi

Wedges- TaylorMade Milled Grind

Putter- TaylorMade Spider Limited Red

Written by Joe Carabini

joe.carabini@foremostgolf.com