Just days after his 20th birthday, Jon Rahm made his PGA Tour debut as an amateur at the 2014 World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba and missed the cut. He said he owes that experience to the resort’s owner, who shares Rahm’s Spanish roots, and despite not living up to his high expectations, it provided an important learning experience.
“I didn’t have my best showing,” he recalled during a press conference ahead of the Mexico Open at Vidanta. “Unfortunate that I got a penalty stroke on my ninth hole Friday, only time in my life where I made a practice swing chipping and the ball moved and I think that cost me, ended up missing by one or two. Since then I came back and played good golf, but that start gave me so much info and so much to learn from the next time I played, which was the next February in Phoenix, I ended up finishing fifth, right, so I took a lot from it.”
Indeed, he did. Rahm became the first amateur to finish in the top five in a Tour event (the 2015 WM Phoenix Open) in seven years. This week, Rahm, now 27, returns to Mexico’s Pacific Coast and the resort town of Puerto Vallarta with its white sandy beaches to play a Greg Norman-designed par-71 layout that measures 7,156 yards.
