He might have had one of the most spectacular debut seasons of any player in history but Jon Rahm was still left slightly frustrated at the end of the 2017 European Tour. Currently the highest ranked European player in the world, at fourth, the 23-year-old Spanish star won the season-ending DP World Tour Championship following his Irish Open triumph earlier in the year, but he arrived in Dubai knowing he could not finish top of the money list regardless of the result.
In an effort to make sure that doesn’t happen again, and to boost his chances of a Ryder Cup debut in 2018, he is planning to play more European Tour events next season (this year he teed up in the minimum five regular Tour tournaments).
“Hopefully I can keep playing like this and hopefully I can win again next year, maybe coming out to this tournament with a chance of actually winning the Race to Dubai,” said Rahm, who finished third behind Justin Rose and winner Tommy Fleetwood. “It didn’t feel good to mathematically have no chance to win it. Hopefully I can play better and actually have a chance.”
Asked if he would play more events, he said, “I’ll try. It’s just hard to be honest, having to combine both tours and the start of the year on the PGA Tour on the west coast being so close to home for me, being defending champion at Torrey Pines. It’s just going to be hard to go away from that and come here.
“We still haven’t set the schedule so that’s something I’m going to look at. I’m going to try to come to Europe. I love coming to Europe, clearly. I have success in Europe and I want to keep coming, have lots of fun and hopefully keep playing good golf.
“I’m a really ambitious person,” the former world number one amateur said. “I know it’s going to be hard to top my first year because it’s a really, really good first year. In fact, it’s a really good year in general, period.
“I’m going to take a couple of days off. I’m going to work with my mental coach, reassess the year, what I’ve done really good, what I’ve done really bad and see what I’ve done and set my goals for next year – hopefully more wins, getting higher up than number four.”
