The Albany Gazette - Masters champ Rahm seeks second straight Mexico Open title

"Feeling good with the game where it's at right now," Rahm said Wednesday at Vidanta Vallarta in Puerto Vallarta.

"I've only been able to defend the Spanish Open as a professional, so it wouldn't be the worst thing if I could make the Mexico Open by my next defense," the world number from Spain said.

Rahm won back-to-back Spanish Open titles on the DP World Tour in 2018 and 2019.

On the US PGA Tour he's made six starts as defending champion and been unable to repeat -- although he led by six strokes after three rounds of his Memorial Tournament defense in 2021 when he had to withdraw after testing positive for Covid.

He said winning another title in a Spanish-speaking country, while not exactly the same as being at home in Spain, would be "meaningful" -- and so would following up his second career major title without too much delay.

"You want to get the next win after a major right away just if you can get done just for your own state of the game," he said.

Rahm's Mexico Open victory last year was his first since he captured his first major title at the 2021 US Open -- a gap of nearly 11 months.

"I played really quality golf, a lot of top-10s, I just couldn't get it done," he recalled of that span.

"To be able to come here and go wire-to-wire, take the lead on Thursday and never give it up and never really be trailing from that point on was big.

"To get it done in any Spanish-speaking country makes it a lot more special, there's always a little bit of extra pressure, extra motivation for me to want to win. So it was big, it was big."

Rahm said his decision to play the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head the week after an exhausting, weather-disrupted Masters campaign had helped him get back in a "competitive mode."

- Drive for five -

He's hardly seemed out of one since last autumn, when two DP World Tour victories presaged a blistering US tour start that featured victories at the Tournament of Champions, the American Express in California, and the Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club before his Masters triumph.

Another win would make Rahm the first player since Justin Thomas in 2016-17 to win five times in a season, and he's the overwhelming favorite to do so with 16th-ranked Tony Finau the only other top-10 player in the field.

Finau finished tied for second last year, his first top-10 of 2022 sparking a strong run that included three victories.

Finau is one of four players in the field with wins this season -- his November victory in the Houston Open counting in the 2022-23 campaign.

Colombia's Nico Echavarria is seeking to add another title after winning his maiden pro title at the Puerto Rico Open in March, the same month that England's Matt Wallace claimed his first title in nearly five years at the Corales Puntacana Championship.

(K.Müller--BBZ)