Jon Rahm admitted he was going to be “skipping out of the golf course” after his fast finish catapulted him from outside the cut line and into the top-15 at the Farmers Insurance Open.
Rahm was enduring another frustrating day at Torrey Pines as he played the North Course and was a shot outside the cut mark on one-over before an eagle on the par-5 fifth reignited his round and he added a hat trick of birdies to his card from the sixth to move within eight of leader Sam Ryder.
The world number three must earn his third win in as many events this season if he is to finally overtake Rory McIlroy at the summit of the world rankings and thoughts of missing the cut never crossed his mind.
“The goal is to win. The cut would have come into mind maybe in the last few holes had I been even par. I knew, like I said, I knew going into 5 through 9 to take care of the par 5s, take care of the short par-4 7, everything would be all right. I was playing with the mindset of catching up to the leaders as much as possible, that’s it.”
The Spaniard is looking to win for the fifth time in seven worldwide starts and he was delighted to make up significant ground on the field given the high winds that swirled around both the North and South Courses.
“I honestly didn’t really play much different strategy-wise. Out here the greens are usually very receptive so I’m going to hit driver as much as I can pretty much anywhere and that’s what I did today.
“Obviously start lines are very different. With those left-to-right winds coming down the stretch, ball started very far left compared to the right-to-left wind we’re used to sometimes. 11 we’re thinking about hitting close to the green, I piped a drive and I had 80 yards to the pin today. Things changed a little bit, but club selection obviously is different and maybe how aggressive you can get is different because the wind obviously can affect it many different ways, but it didn’t change the way I approached the golf course.
“Holes 5 through 9 with or without wind is where you can take advantage of the course. Luckily I’ve been hitting it really good. There’s no difference between those holes or any other five, four holes you can pick throughout the round, it’s just kind of guessed with the wind right in all of them. I think maybe I was a little more aggressive after that second shot on 6 and got in the mentality of making birdies instead of being a little tentative, which is easy to do when it’s blowing as hard as it was blowing today.”
- Full scoring HERE
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