yes to jon rahm He was missing some tribute to his idol, Seve Ballesteros, this Sunday he completed it with honors: He became the fourth Spaniard to win the Augusta Masters, on the same day that his historic compatriot would turn 66.
Seve was the first player from his country to don the green jacket. He did it in 1980. And although there were two other Spaniards who did it later (José María Olazábal, twice, 1994 and 1999, and Sergio García, in 2017), Rahm’s was a triumph that he had been working on for years.
Rahm never missed a cut at Augusta and had four Top 10 finishes: fourth in 2018, ninth in 2019, seventh in 2020 and fifth in 2021. Now, finally, he has the Masters in his palmares.
Scheduled to be number one in the world as a child
In 2020, Rahm was the second Spaniard to reach first place in the world ranking. His first teacher, Eduardo Celles, who received him at his school in Bilbao when Jon’s mother, Ángela, put him in his hands, pointed out that he had considered this since he was a child: “Jon hit the ball very hard, he was very excited about golf. At 14 years old, he told me, on the way to school: ‘Eduardo, I’m going to be number 1 in the world’”.
It was 2008. Nicklaus had already marked the way in golf and Tiger Woods had already had his brilliant irruption in this sport, with 14 victories in the majors. But Rahm’s mirror was none of them. His idol had been born in his own country; It was Seve, who was at the top of the ranking in 1986, when there were still eight years to go before Rahm was born (on November 10, 1994).
“I play golf for Seve Ballesteros and I dream of emulating him and achieving everything he has achieved in golf. My admiration for him will be eternal. I want to thank my parents for teaching me the path and the discipline to get to where I am today,” Rahm said when he was just beginning to make his way in this sport.
Channeling maturity and poise, Jon Rahm becomes the fourth Spaniard to win the Green Jacket.
The PGA TOUR’s Cameron Morfit with more. #themasters
—The Masters (@TheMasters) April 10, 2023
Demanding with himself, Rahm began to look for a way to continue growing. He got the support of the Spanish Federation and went to live in Madrid, where he entered the Blume National School to improve his game. And then he decided to go to the United States, to play for Arizona State University.
When he came to this country, Rahm did not speak English. And that caused him some rejection. At some point he even thought about returning to Spain, but finally decided to fight.
“As a Hispanic immigrant in the United States, although I am not even close to experiencing what some people have suffered in this world due to discrimination, I have been able to see how just because I speak Spanish, even with myself, they have looked at me badly and derogatory way,” Rahm told the Spanish newspaper El País.
That was solved little by little, first, with the knowledge of the language; second, with a manager in Arizona who made him grow even more as a golfer, and, finally, because he found love on American soil: he met Kelley Cahill, now a biology graduate, who was studying at the same university and who is also an athlete: he made the tennis team and practiced javelin throwing. They got married in December 2019 in Bilbao and have two children.
His university stage was brilliant. For 50 weeks he was number one in the world amateur ranking, he was a two-time winner of the Ben Hogan Award (2015 and 2016) and had 11 victories. In that 2016 he played his first two grand slam tournaments: he was the best fan at the US Open (23rd place) and also made the cut at the British Open.
In addition to dealing with the language barrier (a battle he won handily, because today he has English like any native American), Rahm had to fight something else to open up: his character.
It has been proven since he was a child that he does not like to lose. “I value a second place, a third, but as a competitor I want to win. It’s that easy. I live to compete ”, he has said on more than one occasion. And sometimes that worked against him.
“He is a very hot player, but he knows how to channel it very well. As a child, he would get very angry and then transform him into birdies or eagles, while the others, or at least I, would lose my naturalness as soon as I got angry,” Mario Galiano, one of his friends and colleagues at the time of Blume, explained to the newspaper. The vanguard.
“He loves competing and winning so much that sometimes he gets over it. It was like that when he was an amateur and I see it as something positive, it’s a sign that he lives golf one hundred percent,” said another of his teammates, Scott Fernández, along with whom Rahm was crowned champion of Spain in 2014.
But it was not always like this. He once got kicked out of a tournament for a bad reaction and another time he broke the tee marks on a hole for making a bad shot, even though he was leading by a wide margin.
Little by little, Rahm has also worked on that mental control and for this he has given another idol of Spanish sports as an example, but not in the same discipline: tennis player Rafael Nadal.
“I would like to be like Rafa Nadal, who has that anger, he is a great competitor and he has it under control. He has great mental strength. That is where I try to walk. It is continuous work. That desire to win, that anger, there is to have them, and they have helped me a lot”, he explained.
That rebellion is also applied so that in Spain they give golf the importance it deserves. In an interview with the journalist Iñaki Cano, from the newspaper 20 Minutos, she launched thick ammunition: “They only talk about us when we win or make a hole in one. And, you who are into football and golf, you must do everything possible so that non-golf fans appreciate what Sergio García has been doing for Spain and for this sport. Making covers when you win is easy, but you have to find a place for someone who has been in the top ten in the world for years and not just when he fails.
And although he threw a dart at journalists who only talk about football, he is also a fan of this sport, and specifically of Athlétic Bilbao, a love that he has already passed on to his wife, who, like him, admits to being a fan of that club. Rahm also played soccer in his childhood: taking advantage of his height (today he measures 1.91 meters) he was a goalkeeper. And one of his great friends is a benchmark for Athletic, Aritz Aduriz, who, shortly before his retirement, paid tribute to Rahm in a match in which he was in the stands: he took a penalty simulating a putt, with a blow dry and close to the ball.
Seve could not see Rahm’s triumph at the Masters: he died in 2011. But what is certain is that Rahm, with an already tamed character, wants to extend that legacy.
Jose Orlando Ascencio
sports deputy editor
@josasc
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