Jon Rahm is on fire. He has been crowned champion of the Race to Dubai, the old Order of Merit, by winning the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai, the grand finale of the European Tour, and becomes the second Spaniard after Severiano Ballesteros to do so. In addition, thanks to this triumph, he is already number 3 in the world and on top of that he has pocketed five million dollars (three for his triumph and two for being crowned number one in the Race to Dubai 2019).
The 25 year old player from Barrika makes history by beating Seve by winning six European Tour tournaments in his first 40 events and becoming the second golfer in the country, after the Cantabrian (1976, 1977, 1978, 1986, 1988, and 1991), to win the Order of Merit, which recognizes the golfer with the highest earnings during the year, 28 years after he last won it.
“Seve is an idol for all of us, as are Sergio and ‘Ollie’ (Olazabal), and to think that I’m putting my name out there is hard to believe. I can’t believe some of the things I’ve accomplished,” explained a visibly moved Rahm.
However, the Basque, who came to the final day with two good rounds of 66 strokes and one of 69, had to keep calm to get his sixth victory; he led by six strokes, exhibiting excellent putts, but finally only one ahead of the Englishman Tommy Fleetwood and two ahead of the Frenchman Mike Lorenzo-Vera.
Rahm began the day on the Earth Course at Jumeirah Golf Estates in the best way, with a spectacular card of five birdies in the first seven holes, a performance that allowed him to distance himself six strokes behind Lorenzo-Vera. However, he missed par on the 8th and 9th, but recovered on the 10th with his sixth birdie of the day.
From that moment on, he alternated pars with two bogeys and two birdies, one of them definitive at the 18th. With Lorenzo-Vera out of the fight after a series of errors, only Fleetwood resisted the Basque’s push, and with a fantastic card of 65 strokes he was just one shot away from catching Rahm, who finished off the job with a bunker exit that left the ball a meter away from the flag to make birdie afterwards.
For his part, Sergio Garcia was able to recover from Friday’s 73 and finished with -10 in sixth place, while Jorge Campillo was eighteenth with -4, Rafael Cabrera Bello finished twentieth with -3 and Adrià Arnaus, twenty-eighth with -2.
Leave a Reply