Jon Rahm was the first player to speak to the media at the LIV Golf in Nashville, the ninth stop of the Saudi circuit season. The first thing the golfer from Barrika did was confirm the news advanced by TenGolf this Tuesday. He’s going to play. The evolution of the infection in his left foot has been positive and he will be ready to go out on the course. Competing and to what extent he can do it is another matter…
“I feel good. The main reason for withdrawing from the LIV in Houston and the US Open was precautionary, to avoid making things worse and see what measures I can take to prevent this from happening in the future. The wound is still there. I’m not going to show graphic images, but it’s still there. Now I can deal with it. I know I’m not going to make it worse. We need to monitor what happened to make sure it heals well and doesn’t happen again. I feel ready to walk and hit shots, but I haven’t been able to do much. I don’t need much to feel ready to compete, so I’m looking forward to it. I’m happy to be here,” assured the Basque golfer.
In this sense, Rahm says he will have some extra work this week in practice rounds. “As I haven’t done everything I would have liked at home, I probably need to make some extra swings on the practice range and maybe on the golf course to try to get my body in shape as soon as possible.”
Obviously, not competing in the US Open, a tournament he won in 2021, was frustrating and disappointing, but it allowed him to see a tournament of that magnitude from another perspective. He had a good time. “It was quite a spectacle from the comfort of my home. It was nice to be able to watch it on TV. I had never had the opportunity to enjoy a Major from start to finish like this and watching a lot of golf was a lot of fun,” he explains.
Regarding the outcome of the US Open at Pinehurst, Rahm made two very interesting points. One about Bryson DeChambeau’s recovery on the 18th to win and the other about Rory McIlroy’s putt on hole 18. Regarding DeChambeau’s shot, Jon thinks it rightfully enters the gallery of the best shots in history to win a Major. “You never want to see great players make a mistake at the end, whether it’s Bryson’s three-putt on the 15th or Rory’s on the 16th. But I consider Bryson a great player. As far as I can remember, if it’s not the best up-and-down ever to win a Major, it has to be in the top three, up there with Tom Watson‘s chip-in on the 16th at Pebble, Phil (Mickelson)’s up-and-down on the 18th at Baltusrol and, obviously, others like Tiger Woods‘ chip-in on the 16th at Augusta. But being on the 18th to win the tournament, it has to be one of the best. I think it showed a lot and how much has changed in recent years. Hearing him talk about it was very inspiring.”
Regarding McIlroy’s putt on the 18th, Rahm did not hold back in criticizing the little importance given in the American broadcast to the difficulty of the shot, no matter how close it was. “One of the things that burned me the most, and I think it was Smylie (Kaufman) who said it, is that he downplayed how difficult Rory’s putt on the 18th was. He said it was a putt aimed at the center left of the hole. If you do that and miss, you go off the green because of the slope… Rory aimed at least one hole to the left from a meter or less… They severely underestimated how difficult that putt was. Severely. I also understand that it’s difficult to really explain how hard the golf course can be and often they only have those five seconds to say something quickly, so I don’t blame them either,” he explains.
