By his lofty standards, Jon Rahm’s 2024 season has been a disappointment. No titles. Non-factor in the majors. And now, a foot injury he’ll have to fight through at Pinehurst while trying to reverse his season’s downward momentum.
Last week Rahm withdrew from LIV Golf’s Houston event with the new injury. On Tuesday morning at Pinehurst, Rahm said it’s still bothering him.
“It’s a concern. It’s doing better, but definitely still in pain,” he said.
Asked if he still felt he could win this week, Rahm was succinct:
“Anytime I tee it up I feel like I have a good chance.”
He was clearly in pain last week at LIV’s Houston event before he withdrew.
Jon Rahm clearly dealing with some kind of injury here.
Was getting his foot worked on just minutes before teeing off, and now visibly in pain after this shot.
Makes you wonder how long he's been dealing with this. pic.twitter.com/We8FZCRdv0
The exact cause of Rahm’s injury is a bit of a mystery, even to the man himself. He said he has an infection in between his toes but doesn’t know how it started. The injury is painful, and his treatment for the pain before his second round in Houston did not last long.
“We tried to figure it out. The closest term would be a lesion of the skin. I don’t how or what happened, but it got infected, and the pain was high,” he said. “On that Saturday round I did get a shot to numb the area, but by my second hole I was already in pain.”
Rahm said he could have “dragged myself out there” and finished that round, but he didn’t want to create poor swing habits or jeopardize his chances of competing this week at Pinehurst.
Bettors, meanwhile, have also noticed Rahm’s injury status, as his odds to win this week have plummeted to 25-1 after he was listed at 17-1 following the PGA Championship.
It wasn't that long ago when Rahm was the most dominant player in golf. He won four PGA Tour events in 2023, including the Masters. But he’s winless through his first eight events this year on the LIV Tour, though he finished inside the top 10 each week before his WD in Houston. He hasn’t made a ripple in this year’s majors, finishing 45th at Augusta and missing the cut at the PGA Championship at Valhalla.
JEFF RITTER
Jeff Ritter is the Managing Director of SI Golf. He spent more than a decade at Sports Illustrated and Golf Magazine, and in 2020 joined Morning Read to help spark its growth and eventual acquisition by Arena Group, the publisher of Sports Illustrated. He has covered more than 25 major championships, and previously helped launch SI Golf Plus Digital, Golf Magazine’s first original, weekly e-magazine, and served as its top editor. He also launched Golf's “Films” division, the magazine’s first long-form video storytelling franchise, and his debut documentary received an Edward R. Murrow Award for sports reporting. His writing has earned first-place awards from the Society of American Travel Writers, the MIN Magazine Awards, and the Golf Writers Association of America, among others. He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and a master’s from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. A native Michigander, he remains a diehard Wolverine fan and will defend Jim Harbaugh until the bitter end.
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