Jon Rahm said a conversation with Phil Mickelson during a round at the 2025 U.S. Open helped shape how he thinks about Augusta National, where he believes pars can be scoring gains in disguise. Rahm, who won the Masters in 2023, said the advice stuck because the course has a way of making even good shots feel ordinary.
“The single best helpful hint — it was both Jose Maria Olazabal and Phil said it,” Rahm said, before laying out the math he says matters at Augusta. “Statistically, 99.9% of the time, for the whole tournament, the only holes that play under par are the par 5s. Every other hole at Augusta National plays over par.”
That view fits the tournament’s long scoring record. From the early 1940s through 2025, every non-par-5 at Augusta National has played over par on average, while every par-5 has played fractionally below par. Rahm said that means players should not get greedy when the course starts to punish mistakes. “That includes 3,” he said. “That includes nine, even when people are hitting it way down there, that includes every single hole people might consider easy. All of them play over par, which means if you’re making a par, you’re not losing strokes to anybody.”
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The numbers from the 2025 Masters make the point. Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose finished tied at 11 under and went to a playoff, while the two front-nine par-5s averaged 4.61 strokes. The 13th hole played to 4.82 and the 15th averaged 4.926, even after new tee boxes were added to both holes in the last five years. Rahm said those margins matter because on a course like Augusta, even a par on a par-5 barely moves the needle. “And even if you make a par on a par-5, it’s only 0.1 or 0.2, depending on the year,” he said. “It’s not much. You’re not really losing strokes. So when you think, Oh, made a par on this hole, you’re not really losing that much.”
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Rahm’s outlook comes as he arrives with real form behind him. He finished in the top five of all five LIV events in 2025, a steady run that suggests his Masters calculations are not just theory. The bigger question is whether he turns that discipline into another Sunday at Augusta, where patience often matters as much as power and the smallest mistake can flip a tournament.
