He may have had one of the most spectacular debut seasons of any player in history, but Jon Rahm was still a bit frustrated at the end of the 2017 European Tour. He is currently the highest-ranked European in the world, in fourth place. The 23-year-old Spanish star won the season-ending DP World Tour Championship following his Irish Open triumph earlier in the year, but arrived in Dubai knowing he couldn’t finish top of the earnings list regardless of the result.
In an effort to make sure that doesn’t happen again, and to increase his chances of a Ryder Cup debut in 2018, Rahm plans to play more European Tour tournaments in the season that just began with the Hong Kong Open (on the just completed season he played the minimum five regular Tour tournaments required to qualify for European Tour membership).
“Fortunately I can keep playing like this and hopefully win again next year, and maybe play this tournament with a chance to win the Race to Dubai,” said Rahm, who finished third in the DP World Tour Championship behind Justin Rose and winner Tommy Fleetwood. “No me felt good that mathematically no had the chance to win it (the Race to Dubai). Hopefully I can play better and really have a chance to make it.”
When asked if he would play more tournaments on the European Tour, the Basque said: “I will try. It’s difficult, to be honest, having to combine both circuits, and plus with 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 going to be hard to get away from that and come out here.”
“We haven’t set the schedule yet, so that’s something I’m going to look at,” he added. “I’m going to try to come to Europe. I love coming to Europe, clearly. I’m successful in Europe and I want to keep coming over, have a lot of fun and hopefully keep playing golf.
“I’m a really ambitious person,” said the one-time world number one amateur . “I know it’s going to be hard to top my first year because it’s a really good first year. In fact, it’s a really good year overall, period. I’m going to take a couple of days off. I’m going to work with my mental coach, re-evaluate the year, what I did really well, what I did really bad and look at what I did and set my goals for next year: hopefully more wins, get higher from number four (in the world rankings).”
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