Jon Rahm eyes first Muirfield visit as wait for Open return goes on for East Lothian venue
Spaniard talks about visits to two revered Scottish venues being on his ‘wish list’
Jon Rahm is determined to play Muirfield for the first time and reckons he’ll need to try and tick it off his list before The Open eventually returns to the East Lothian venue.
Speaking earlier in the week at the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai, the Spaniard revealed that Muirfield was one of the top courses he’s not yet played along with the likes of Royal County Down and revered Australian layouts such as Royal Melbourne and Royal Adelaide.
Rahm was still at college in the US when Phil Mickelson won the most recent edition of The Open at Muirfield in 2013 and, with Carnoustie having just been announced by The R&A to stage the 2029 event, the wait for a return to the East Lothian course goes on.
“Yeah I don't know the future,” said Rahm, speaking after the second round of the DP World Tour’s season finale in the UAE, in reply to being asked about Muirfield and not having played it yet by The Scotsman.
“Yeah, it is one of those where, if I'm playing The Renaissance (in the Genesis Scottish Open) I'm going to have to make my way over to Muirfield and find a way to get in because all players I ask about Open Championship venues, Muirfield and Turnberry (where the Claret Jug event was last held in 2009), both of them, come very high on the list and I haven't been able to play even one of them so, hopefully, in the future I will.”
In 2018, the last time The Open was held at Carnoustie, Rahm missed the cut - he followed a first-round 69 with a 78 - as Francesco Molinari created history by becoming the first Italian to win a major.
“You don’t get called Car-nasty for no reason, so I would say ‘yes’,” replied Rahm, smiling, after being asked if he felt the Angus venue is the hardest on the list of courses used by The R&A for the world’s oldest major. “They all can be difficult, Troon can be quite tricky If we have very difficult conditions like we did there a few years ago.”
After signing for a second consecutive 71 on the Earth Course at Jumeirah Golf Estates for a two-under-par halfway total, Rahm, last week’s Abu Dhabi Aldar Championship winner, sits just three shots behind his Ryder Cup team-mates Rory McIlroy and Tyrrell Hatton in the $10 million season-ending Rolex Series event.
“I've played really, really good golf,” said the three-time winner of this event. “Yesterday, I made really good swings that just didn't convert into fairways and I was playing defensive.
“Today, I hit a lot of fairways and those iron shots with the wind and whatever maybe weren't quite as close as I would have liked but I'll take anything under par in these conditions.”
In the opening round, Rahm’s eagle chip at the par-5 18th hit the middle of the flag but stayed out, with the exact same thing happening in the second circuit at the par-5 14th.
“The one on 18 yesterday perhaps wasn't going as fast as the one on 14 today,” he said when it was suggested that he’s not had any luck so far this week. !It was going to be at least 30 feet for birdie, so I got very lucky there.”
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