2021 Tour Championship: Top 10 power rankings at East Lake

Oh, how the tables have turned for Jon Rahm.

Flash back to early June when he was ready to climb atop the FedEx Cup standings leading the Memorial Tournament by six shots heading to the final round. Then, as we remember, Rahm was forced to withdraw immediately after Saturday’s round due to a positive COVID-19 test.

One of the benefactors was Patrick Cantlay, who went from a tie for second place to co-leader, then a winner in a playoff over Collin Morikawa.

That’s a 1,100 point swing between Rahm and Cantlay as Cantlay got the 550 FedEx Cup points for winning an elevated status event and Rahm took home a goose egg. Now there are 1,239 points between the two fellas.

The points are out the window now at the Tour Championship, so Rahmbo can just keep his eyes on the leaderboard. He’ll see he’s four shots off the pace of Cantlay and you know he’d love to flip the script and steal the title away from him this time.

I like Rahm to do so and bounce back like he did to win the U.S. Open in his first event back from COVID quarantine.

The 26-year-old Spaniard has a decent record at East Lake. Rahm’s qualified for the Tour Championship each year since 2017 and never finished outside the top half of the leaderboard.

Last year, the former Arizona State Sun Devil took fourth in the FedEx Cup and was sixth in gross scoring.

Rahm is on a streak of five straight top-10s leading into Atlanta.

He was right there to win The Northern Trust before settling for third, then followed up with T-9th last week at the BMW Championship.

He’s a candidate for PGA Tour Player of the Year and is tops in strokes gained tee to green (1.781) and total strokes gained (2.084).