Rahm achieves excellence on his roadmap to the Great

Rahm perfectly represents a brilliant generation of players of insulting youth who followed the example of Tiger Woods and turned golf into a total sport, both physically and mentally. The comfort zone based solely on quality, class and ‘touch’ is over. There is talent, of course, without it climbing to the top would be a chimera, but in contemporary golf there is much more, hours and hours of training to shore up your strengths, organize your head to know how to manage moments of anxiety and correct those little ones. mistakes that can establish the border between success and a sudden stop. The king of the world ranking has been able to mix these ingredients in the right doses and has created a cocktail with a unique flavor and texture that has catapulted him to Olympus.

He summed it up himself with a reflection at the Genesis Invitational. “Good times come and go. Dynamics is something that exists in sport, but if you push yourself all year long and in the off weeks and at home you do the right things, you have a better chance of never feeling that feeling that you can lose momentum. Many of us spend many hours both on the course and off it doing the right things to stay physically and mentally fit to maintain that level. I have always thought that making decisions out of fear is inappropriate. I haven’t made many decisions in my life that way. I hope I can continue like this, is all I can say. Getting to the top is hard, but staying for a long period of time is more difficult,” he explained when asked about his reliability.

to the smallest detail

Turning Rahm’s achievements since he won the Spanish Open in October with overwhelming authority into a mere statistic would be a major mistake. His security in all facets of the game has not come about by chance, but is the product of careful preparation down to the smallest detail. There is a fact that says it all. In Los Angeles he has achieved his fifth victory in the last nine tournaments in which he has participated: Madrid (first), CJ Cup (fourth), the Dubai Final (first, on the European circuit), Hero Challenge (eighth), Hawaii ( first), American Express (first), Farmers Insurance (seventh), Phoenix Open (third) and the Genesis (first). He places the turning point in August, after suffering a few very difficult weeks in which his performance did not match his discreet cards.

March will be a very interesting month with the Arnold Palmer Invitational and, above all, The Players, which is considered the fifth ‘Major’ due to the difficulty of the course and the presence of the most renowned professionals on the planet. And then the Greats. Augusta in April, PGA in May (Rochester, New York), US Open in June (Los Angeles) and the British in July (Liverpool). In a recent conversation with the Spanish media, he was asked which one he would like to win and he admitted that he has many doubts. He would love to put on the green jacket, as Severiano Ballesteros, José María Olazabal and Sergio García have already done, but he is also seduced by being the first Spaniard to succeed in the PGA, adding his second US Open after the one achieved in 2021 in Torrey Pines and coming out victorious. at the British Open, the European ‘Major’.