![\"\"](\"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.holaincompany.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/images_Jugadores_jon-rahm-17-valderrama-WEB.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Jon Rahm, one of the top favorites to win the Estrella Damm N.A. Andaluc\u00eda Masters, expressed himself in a press conference a few hours before starting his participation in the tournament:<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2017 I arrived at Valderrama very tired in my first year as a professional, plus I approached the tournament as if I were in the United States and I started hitting drives like crazy. It was a bad strategy in a week when I wasn\u2019t playing well.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNow it\u2019s clear to me that the most important thing is the shot from the tee. It all depends on where you put it from the tee because you don\u2019t have to make distance, but place it well. But it\u2019s not all about strategy, because then you have to execute it. If you play well you will have options whether you are aggressive or not\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to take the course with more patience. Ian Poulter gave me some good advice and that\u2019s that four rounds under par at Valderrama is a top 10. It suits me that my last tournament was Pebble Beach because it\u2019s similar, you don\u2019t play a lot with the drive.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe difficulty at Valderrama is from tee to green. There are several holes where I still don\u2019t have a clear shot, such as 16, 12 or 13. They are holes that give you several options and I don\u2019t have a shot where I\u2019m totally comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.holaincompany.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/images_Jugadores_rahm-estrella-damm-andalucia-masters-2019-rc-valderrama-3-WEB.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\u201cThe greens are still not as hard as they can be. Compared to Augusta, they are much smaller and less undulating, but in how the ball rolls they are similar. They are spectacular.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only player who has had a very long streak of missed cuts is Tiger Woods, but he played fewer tournaments. If you play a lot, you\u2019re going to miss cuts from time to time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a golfer I grew up thinking I couldn\u2019t be an Olympian and now that it\u2019s possible, hopefully I can go. I have been fortunate enough to be world champion and European champion representing Spain and I would love to be Olympic champion representing my country.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to play very well to beat Sergio here, it\u2019s a course he likes and for his type of game it\u2019s almost perfect. I would love to play the last match on Sunday with Sergio and give him a fight. Sergio is a great champion and I imagine he will win here again.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe players are getting stronger and stronger and fitness is an advantage, as we are seeing with Brooks Koepka or Dustin Johnson. Thank God, instead of fighting distance with more distance, as they do in the United States, we have courses like this, short courses where the drive doesn\u2019t come into play. Here you can only play it on the 4th, 7th, 11th, 17th, and on the 9th and 13th, hurrying. Six holes and you\u2019re playing it in two.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the big controversy we have in golf today: changing the ball, the drive, the technology, etc. when it would be better to make the courses shorter and narrower.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs much as Brooks Koepka says it\u2019s easy to win a major, it\u2019s not, I just try to play well and if I have a choice I\u2019d like to win a major as soon as possible, but it might come in 10 years. A golf career can be defined by more things than the majors; there is so much more to life and golf.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSome friends of my father\u2019s were at the 1997 Ryder Cup. When he came back, they encouraged him to play and we signed up for the school in Celles. That\u2019s how it all started, if it wasn\u2019t for that Ryder Cup, I probably wouldn\u2019t be here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2007 I came to watch a Volvo Masters and I got my shirt signed by Stenson, Casey. The first shot I saw was one of Thomas Bjorn\u2019s bunker shot on the 7th, I also saw Ian Poulter. These are four players with whom I have shared a Ryder Cup and if they had told me then I would not have believed it\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jon Rahm, one of the top favorites to win the Estrella Damm N.A. Andaluc\u00eda Masters, expressed himself in a press conference a few hours before starting his participation in the tournament: \u201cIn 2017 I arrived at Valderrama very tired in my first year as a professional, plus I approached the tournament as if I were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":9687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}