MADRID \u2014 Jon Rahm is back in action at his home tournament in Spain following what he considered the toughest week mentally of his career during the Ryder Cup in New York.<\/p>\n
Rahm is in Madrid to try to win a record fourth Spanish Open title and surpass Seve Ballesteros as the tournament’s most successful golfer since the creation of the European tour in 1972.<\/p>\n
Rahm helped Europe win the Ryder Cup in the United States two weeks ago, when the raucous home crowd tormented the European players from the start.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat week in New York was mentally the toughest week of my career, but at the same time it was the most fun I’ve had,\u201d he said Tuesday. \u201cWhat happened there during those three days was something inhospitable. At times I couldn’t believe it.”<\/p>\n
Rahm teamed up with Tyrrell Hatton at Bethpage Black and they were some of the most targeted Europeans by the New York crowd.<\/p>\n
Rahm said he heard it all from the American fans and, \u201cwith alcohol being sold (very early), by 9 a.m. things were already out of control.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could compare it to soccer, but then you have the noise of 50,000 people and you don\u2019t actually hear what each person is saying,\u201d Rahm said. \u201cIn my case, every step I took I could hear everything.”<\/p>\n
Rahm said the outcome couldn’t have been any better as Europe clinched the victory to retain the trophy won two years ago in Rome.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s going to be hard to outdo that week, possibly in the 2031 Ryder here in Spain, which will be more special for me than for anybody else,” Rahm said.<\/p>\n
Rahm will be making his seventh appearance in Madrid, with his victories coming in 2018, 2019 and 2022. He was runner-up to fellow Spaniard \u00c1ngel Hidalgo in a playoff last year.<\/p>\n
Ballesteros won the last of his 50 titles on the European tour at the Spanish Open in 1995.<\/p>\n
It will be the first time the tournament will offer an automatic spot in next year’s Masters and the British Open to the winner.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuper proud of that,\u201d said Sergio Garcia, another home-crowd favorite. \u201cIt’s kind of showing the quality of the field that we have this week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rahm and Garcia, the 2002 winner in Spain, are among the LIV players in the field.<\/p>\n
Also playing this week are Patrick Reed, Joaquin Niemann and Shane Lowry, who made the cup-retaining putt for Europe in the Ryder Cup.<\/p>\n
This is also the 50-year anniversary of golf great Arnold Palmer winning the tournament in 1975.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MADRID \u2014 Jon Rahm is back in action at his home tournament in Spain following what he considered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-199914","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}