The 25-year-old overtook Rory McIlroy to the top of the world rankings after winning the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village two weeks ago and is only the second Spaniard to achieve the feat, alongside the late Seve Ballesteros.

Ahead of his first start as world No.1, Rahm explained being ranked as the best golfer on the planet was the culmination of four years of hard work since turning professional in 2016.

“Being No. 1 in the world is a great thing,” he said in a press conference earlier this week.

“It’s a consequence of playing good golf throughout the last four years, not only last week. […] I played great golf the last four years, but I can keep playing that good or better to hopefully stay here for a long time.”

DeChambeau arrives at TPC Southwind after missing the cut at the Memorial Tournament, which ended a run of seven consecutive top-eight finishes. Fowler is hoping to reverse a poor run of form that has seen him miss the cut in five of his last nine entries.

Rahm, DeChambeau and Thomas will start the tournament from tee No. 10 at 12:40 p.m. ET on Thursday, followed by Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth and Webb Simpson at 12:50 p.m. ET.

McIlroy may have lost the world no. 1 crown to Rahm but finished tied for fourth and tied for seventh in his last two visits to TPC Southwind and has finished below 11th just once in his last 13 WGC starts.

Spieth finished tied for 13th at the Memorial Tournament, his second top-15 finish since the PGA Tour resumed after the hiatus enforced by the novel coronavirus pandemic. Troubling for the three-time major winne as that was also only his fifth top-20 finish in the last 14 events dating back to December last year.

Conversely, Simpson won the RBC Heritage last month and finished second at TPC Southwind 12 months ago.

The other featured groups include defending champion Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed and Viktor Hovland, who tee off from the first hole at 1:50 p.m. ET, preceded 10 minutes earlier by world No. 3 Justin Thomas, Hideki Matsuyama and Collin Morikawa.

Thomas has four top-20 finishes in five events since the restart, which included losing a playoff at the Workday Charity Open three weeks ago.

Koepka has missed the cut twice in his last three entries and his best result since the restart is a seventh place finish at the RBC Heritage last month.

Here’s everything you need to know ahead of Thursday.

Selected tee times (all times ET)

Tee No. 1

12:10 p. m. —Nick Taylor, Phil Mickelson, Keegan Bradley12:30 p. m. —Paul Casey, Xander Schauffele, Sergio Garcia12:40 p. m. —Chez Reavie, Bubba Watson, Bernd Wiesberger12:50 p. m. —Marc Leishman, Kevin Na, Louis Oosthuizen1:30 p. m. —Dustin Johnson, Tyrrell Hatton, Shane Lowry1:40 p. m. —Collin Morikawa, Justin Thomas, Hideki Matsuyama1:50 p. m. —Patrick Reed, Viktor Hovland, Brooks Koepka

Tee No. 10

12:20 p. m. —Daniel Berger, Tommy Fleetwood, Abraham Ancer12:30 p. m. —Sungjae Im, Patrick Cantlay, Matt Kuchar12:40 p. m. —Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Rickie Fowler12:50 p. m. —Webb Simpson, Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth1:00 p. m. —Gary Woodland, Tony Finau, Matthew Fitzpatrick1:30 p. m. —Matthew Wolff, Graeme McDowell, Jason Day1:40 p. m. —Joaquin Niemann, J. T. Poston, Danny Willett1:50 p. m. —Cameron Champ, C. T. Pan, Ian Poulter

WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational TV and live stream coverage

The tournament will be broadcast by Golf Channel and CBS. On Thursday and Friday, coverage begins at 2 p.m. ET on Golf Channel and runs until 7 p.m ET.

On Saturday, coverage begins on Golf Channel at 12 p.m. ET, running until 2 p.m. before switching to CBS, while on Sunday coverage on Golf Channel runs from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. before moving to CBS.

Live stream will be available on PGA Tour Live from 7 a.m. ET on Thursday and Friday and from 9 a.m. ET on Saturday and Sunday.