Jon Rahm has announced his participation in this year’s Open de España, which will take place at the Club de Campo Villa de Madrid between October 9 and 12.
The Basque golfer, a three-time winner of the tournament (2018, 2019, and 2022), aims to surpass Severiano Ballesteros and approach Ángel de la Torre’s record for most victories with five titles in the early years of the 20th century, between 1916 and 1925.
Jon Rahm, statements
Rahm’s participation has been filled with great results, including his 2022 victory, when the Spaniard was crowned champion with the lowest score of the tournament: 259 strokes and -25, setting the tournament’s best mark.
In his last performance in Madrid, he came close to snatching victory from Málaga native Ángel Hidalgo in the playoff.
The presence of the Barrica native is an incentive for fans, who will be able to enjoy the golfer, who has a long list of victories, including the 2021 US Open and the 2023 Masters at Augusta.
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 finished twenty-third, then turned professional, simultaneously losing the right to play in the Open.
The Quicken Loans National was his first event as a professional and he finished third. The Canadian Open instead saw him finish 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[5], managing to enter the major tournaments of the world scene. At the Mexico Championship, an event of the World Golf Championships series, he finished third, two shots behind the winner Dustin Johnson[6], while in the second event, the Dell Technologies Match Play, he lost the final against Johnson himself. He then won the Irish by six shots 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, again behind Dustin Johnson, but then came the triumph at the CareerBuilder Challenge with which he reached the second position in the ranking: he followed that at the Spanish Open and that at the 2018 Ryder Cup together with the European team. He ended the year by also obtaining the title at the Hero World Challenge in December. In 2019 he achieved 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 the title at the Spanish Open. At the end of the season he triumphed again at the DP World Tour Championship, Dubai, thus finishing in the lead in the Race to Dubai and becoming Golfer of the Year of the European Tour.
In the year marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to the title of the Memorial Tournament 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 shots at the end of the third round, due to a positive test for COVID-19. However, his first triumph in a major arrived already on 20 June, at the U.S. Open. Open, thanks to two birdies in the last two holes. In July he placed third at the Championship tied with Louis Oosthuizen. Later in October he triumphed for a second time in the 2023 Ryder Cup.
On 8 December 2023, it was announced that the Spanish golfer had moved from the PGA Tour to the Saudi LIV Golf circuit, with which he had signed a three-year participation contract, with an estimated earnings of around 550 million euros.
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