This Friday kicks off a new season of LIV Golf in Mayakoba with the presence of four Spanish players. Sergio García, David Puig and Eugenio López Chacarra, the veterans, share a team in the Fireballs, while Jon Rahm embarks on a new adventure at the helm of Legion XIII.
The youngest of all, at 22 years old, is Puig, a golfer who grew a lot in 2023, won his first tournament valid for the world ranking in Singapore and qualified for the US Open. His evolution was spectacular. David, note the fact, has the honour of not having missed a cut in world ranking tournaments. Thirteen out of thirteen. Consistency. In addition, he already has one victory, two third places and five top 10s.
However, his career has only just begun, he only thinks about growing and does not hesitate to stick to the best to learn every day. For this reason, among other things, he has prepared this start of the season in Mexico alongside Jon Rahm. Hand in hand. Six days sharing work sessions in Arizona, on the courses of Whisper Rock and Silverleaf, absorbing everything and more and, above all, proving to himself that Jon is not that far away. There is no better way to feed his ambition.
Rahm and Puig share the same coach, Dave Philips, so it has been easier to coincide on practice days. “It’s been great to play these days with Jon. It’s been great to see first-hand how good he is and, above all, how easy he makes it look. You see him and he makes it seem easy. It helps a lot to see something like that, especially when you’re in pre-season and trying to fine-tune your game,” David explains to Ten Golf.
There is no better companion to set the bar high and raise the demand. Puig has no small dreams. “My main goal this year is to win an individual tournament in LIV and help my team do well. At the same time, I want to play well in the Asian Tour, qualify for the two Majors that I can and if the Olympic Games come into sight, I will also go for them,” he assures.
David will continue to play tournaments on the Asian Tour because this is stipulated by his link with LIV Golf, but also because he wants to continue growing in the world ranking. So, after this week’s tournament in Mayakoba and next week’s in Las Vegas, the golfer from La Garriga will play two consecutive weeks in Asia, specifically in Malaysia, where he will fight for a place in the Open Championship (three are distributed) and in Oman, where he will play the first International Series of the season.
Right after Oman, there will be another two weeks in LIV, in Jeddah and Hong Kong to be exact, and he could finish this good run of tournaments with a new International Series in Macau. That would be seven consecutive weeks. This last Asian stop will also depend on how he feels energy-wise and the results he has achieved in the previous tournaments.
To qualify for the Open he can do so in tournaments that distribute places, like Malaysia, and where he has entry, or in the preliminaries, where last year he was on the verge. For the US Open, the same, through the preliminaries, and for the Olympic Games he would need to score many world ranking points, or in other words, do very well every time he plays a tournament on the Asian Tour. He accepts the challenge.
