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“What’s my aim in this Ryder Cup? To win every match, let’s hope. The best thing about the competition, aside from winning it, is entering the locker room with your teammates and forming bonds and friendships that will last a lifetime.”
Jon Rahm, statements
Thus said Jon Rahm, Spanish golfer and star of Team Europe, in the press conference ahead of the start (September 29) of the Ryder Cup ’23.
“Would I pay an entry fee to be part of Team Europe (if I wasn’t part of it, ed.)? Yes, I would. The sense of anticipation of the Ryder Cup is simply special,” adds the former world number one. He attended Arizona State University and won 11 college tournaments, second only to Phil Mickelson who won 16 titles.
In 2015 he participated as an amateur in the Phoenix Open, finishing fifth. On April 1 he became first in the World Amateur Golf Ranking and remained there for 25 weeks, then regained the position and held it for another 35 weeks.
He thus qualified for the U.S. Open and the Open Championship the following year: in the first of the two tournaments he came twenty-third, then turned professional, simultaneously losing the right to play in the Open. The Quicken Loans National was his first professional event and he finished third.
The Canadian Open instead saw him come second. At the end of the season he obtained a card for the 2017 PGA Tour. Rahm found his first success in the Farmers Insurance Open thanks to an eagle on the last hole, managing to enter the major tournaments on the world scene.
At the Mexico Championship, an event in the World Golf Championships series, he finished third, two strokes behind the winner Dustin Johnson, while in the second event, the Dell Technologies Match Play, he lost the final against Johnson himself.
He later won the Irish Open by six strokes and the final tournament of the European Tour season, the DP World Tour Championship, Dubai, also winning the rookie of the year award. He began 2018 with a second place at the Tournament of Champions, still behind Dustin Johnson, but then came the triumph at the CareerBuilder Challenge with which he reached second position in the ranking: followed by the one at the Spanish Open and the one at the 2018 Ryder Cup together with European team.
He finished the year by also taking the title at the Hero World Challenge in December. In 2019 came success at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans and third place at the U.S. Open. He then returned to win the Irish Open and defended his title at the Spanish Open.
At the end of the season he triumphed again at the DP World Tour Championship, Dubai, thus finishing the Race to Dubai in the lead and becoming Golfer of the Year of the European Tour. In the year marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to the Memorial Tournament title he became first in the world rankings, the second Spaniard in history to do so after Severiano Ballesteros.
In August he also won the BMW Championship, beating Dustin Johnson in the playoff. In June 2021 he was forced to abandon the Memorial Tournament, where he was leading by six strokes at the end of the third round, due to a positive COVID-19 test-.
However, his first triumph in a major arrived on June 20th, at the U.S. Open, thanks to two birdies in the last two holes. In July he placed third at the Open Championship tied with Louis Oosthuizen.
