PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 12, 2026

Jon Rahm

Aronimink Golf Club

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Jon Rahm joins us. Welcome to Aronimink and your 10th PGA Championship.

How do you feel about your game coming into this season's second major?

JON RAHM: I keep feeling it's my 10th major here. Even though I'm feeling pretty young, I'm feeling pretty old at the same time. Hard to believe it's been a decade of majors already.

Feeling good. It's been obviously a good year. Last week was a proper test of golf. Those Trump properties are usually pretty good golf courses, and with the wind switching, even though the scores were low because the greens were in absolute perfect condition and receptive and the fairways were running out so much, I thought it was a really good test.

I didn't hit it my best, but you can learn a few things on the week prior to a major. Feeling pretty good and hope I can keep the form going.

Q. This is kind of a random question, but you have the best par-3 scoring average of anybody in the past 10 years when you put it all together and look at it. Just wondering from like a strategy perspective if you do anything different on par-3s compared to like an approach shot of the same distance.

JON RAHM: No. Honestly, I am actually surprised I would be the one because it's usually a see-a-flag, hit-flag type of attitude.

No, there's nothing special that goes into it. There's some holes, yeah, obviously if you're playing the 17th hole here, some of the pin locations you might need to be a bit more passive, but nothing that goes actively into that, no.

Q. So nothing actively different? It's the same process?

JON RAHM: Yeah, yeah. It's pretty much the same, yeah. I mean, the only good thing is that you're guaranteed a good lie on a par-3. So if, I would say, mid- to a long-iron game, I'm pretty good, and I think that probably has something to do with it.

But there's nothing that goes into it any different to any other shot, no.

Q. Rory was in here saying that these old courses do restorations and take out all the trees, that he feels like it turns the strategy into kind of like just hit driver on every hole and kind of figure it out from there. How do you feel about this kind of trend in golf architecture of cutting down a bunch of trees?

JON RAHM: I don't know about it. I've been making this joke for the last few years where I see a lot of golf courses coming in saying, look, 100 years ago, this golf course was like this, there was no trees. I'm like, well, in the back of my mind, they planted those trees with the future vision of having those trees in play, and now you're taking them all out.

While I see both points, I don't know which one is more valid than the next. I do believe a lot of it has to do with course conditions. Some of these big oak trees out here in the wintertime when the leaves are falling and might get a little bit more rain or snow, taking some out can help with, I would say, a wind flow and overall conditions of the course.

I think the course setup that was expected in the '30s, '40s, and '50s, compared to what we have right now with how tight the grass is and how meticulous everything is, probably has something to do with it as well. I think golf has evolved, and for the overall health of the course, they might need to take those trees out.

However, when it comes to the playability, I don't know because I've never played this course with trees. I'm pretty sure in 2018 it looked pretty similar to what we have right now. It does seem like it would let you be able to be more aggressive off the tees. There's quite a few lengthy holds out there. Also, the game has shifted a bit that way nowadays.

I think with advances in the study of the game and biomechanics and the technology of the drivers and the golf ball, you're going to have a lot of players that hit it very far be very accurate, and it's going to be very difficult to lay back to hit fairways and have the same scoring opportunities even though you're on the fairway with a 5-iron, whereas a player like Rory with a wedge out of the rough is still going to be pretty capable. So it's also the name of the game nowadays.

Q. A Spanish golfer hasn't won this tournament yet, and if you win this week, you would complete the Spanish Grand Slam. I know as someone who cares so much about history of the game, how much would that mean to you? Does that sort of give you an extra incentive every time you come to this tournament to get that achievement?

JON RAHM: It does mean a lot. It's not only that, but statistically for whatever reason it's our poorest performance across all majors. Even Ollie and Sergio have had quite a few chances at The Open. They've had chances at the U.S. Open, and Seve, as well, and Sergio. I'm not so sure about Ollie.

But the PGA, they did remind me last year that for whatever reason we haven't performed our best at. I don't know why, but it is something that is in my mind obviously, having one left. It would be wonderful to close that fourth leg of the Grand Slam. Even though every major is extremely special in that way, to tie it all together with the greats of the past of Spain would be quite unique.

Q. Jon, how would you compare your form coming into this major with your form going into your two major wins?

JON RAHM: Well, can't get too much into the U.S. Open with the whole COVID fiasco.

And 2023 was odd. Even though I played fantastic in January and February, most of March I played really bad golf. I had three wins early playing incredible, and then at the Match Play and Bay Hill, even though I shot a really good first round of Bay Hill, I barely survived and made the cut, and it was a piss-poor weekend. Same with the Match Play, I didn't play good.

In essence, for how good I'd been playing, I got to Augusta under the radar, like not really in anybody's mind.

So each one has been a very, very different experience. I can't really tell you about the U.S. Open because I was at home for a good five, six days without being able to do much.

If it goes golf-wise, I think the most comfortable I was playing was '21. I think '21, when it comes to swing, was one of my best years. It was really, really good. Just in general when I went out there, I didn't think I could do any wrong, and it showed with my consistency across the board in all the tournaments I played that year.

'23 was a bit more up and down. Especially after the Masters, I didn't play great.

So each one is different. I would say somewhere in between right now, very, very comfortable in general. But I've been playing, obviously, besides the Masters, pretty good golf up until now.

So hard to compare them. Each one is so different when you have all these people. But I would say somewhere in between those two. I wish I was swinging it as good as I was in '21 because that Memorial was three days where it was arguably the best golf I could possibly play.

Q. Jon, when you signed with LIV a couple years ago, you had made remarks to the effect of hoping that it might help accelerate a merger between the PGA TOUR and LIV. When you look back at that now, A, how surprised are you about how things have gone? And B, if you had had a crystal ball in 2024, would you have done anything differently than you did?

JON RAHM: I was never like thinking that I was going to be any sort of weight that would tip the scales to make things come together. That was never an argument in my mind.

When asked if that was the case for people to come together, that would be great. I never made a decision based on that.

Now, I would also say I've made a lot of decisions in my life, and I've never gone back thinking, Oh, had I known this again, I would do X and Y different. I could do that about 15 different golf shots on the golf course every single day. If I lived my life like that as a golfer, I would be a very pessimistic person.

So we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, and all we can do is learn from things that happen in the past good and bad. Just to speculate on what could have done, what could have been different doesn't really make much sense.

Q. I think as a human being, just anybody, it's very difficult to resist the urge to kind of go over prior decisions, but you're saying you are capable of doing that? You're able to sort of put that kind of reverse speculation out of your head?

JON RAHM: Well, we all go back. We all think what could have been and what couldn't have been. It's inevitable.

If you made all the decisions -- whatever decision you've made or choice is thought through and made for the reasons that you think are proper reasons, there's no sense in dwelling on it. In fact, you shouldn't really be unhappy about it. At least there's nothing that you regret.

If the terms change afterward, like it's happened with LIV that things changed a little bit, it's an afterthought, not a problem from the choice. I would say that elements have changed a little bit. That's it.

Q. It seemed at the beginning that you had a hard time believing that it's been a decade of majors. How is it, for all of us, how is it to be Top 5, Top 10 player in the world with all the experiences that comes with being in that group?

JON RAHM: It's great. It's fantastic. Just, again, I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that it's been 10 years. It's been really good.

I mean, you want to -- I want to aspire to be the best I can be, and that's led me to play golf at a really high level.

The best way I can say it, it's pretty cool and pretty unique, and I hope I can keep doing it in the next decade as well.

Q. Being 10 years into this across the board with all the majors, diet, rest, recovery, optimization, all those things are vital to your process. How much do you and your team verbalize winning?

JON RAHM: Boy, I would say it's a complicated answer, and I'll tell you why.

One of the first things I ever told Adam before we started working together, I said, Every decision we make on the golf course is to win. If we have a chance to win, four holes left, I'm going to try to take it. I don't care if I finish 2nd or 10th. The job is to try to win. And I basically tell that to everyone that's on my team.

My goal, I'm a competitor first, and I want to win.

Now, with that said, we play in a sport where the winningest player in history won 30 percent of the time. So in theory, compared to other sports, not that often. I think you have to make the wins in every single day in every single thing you do. Sometimes 5th place might be a really good week. You've done some good things. You've made some mistake, you can learn from it, so move on.

You have to appreciate the wins in a different way. Not all of them mean that you're holding a trophy. It could be a lot more intricate than that, but it's -- I think at my best I was at 10 percent win ratio, which luckily has been enough to pretty much win every single year I've played besides one, and I should be very fortunate to be able to do that.

In between there's been plenty of times where I consider a two-, three-, four-tournament stretch a win because of certain things I did well. So it's very present, but you can't just take it directly on winning tournaments, at least the way I see it.

Q. How do you measure improvement? How do you know if you're a better golfer than you were last year than two years ago, et cetera?

JON RAHM: I think sometimes the feel you have. Like feel that you might be -- you're doing certain things well. Sometimes you might not reflect in the score for whatever it may be, but I think it's a feeling you have as a player that things are getting better. Then all of a sudden it shows. It would be hard to explain, to be honest.

Q. Well, if you look at last year, where I think you felt like you finished second every week but didn't win, was that a good year? If it was obviously a very consistent year, do you not ask yourself what is keeping me from one shot better?

JON RAHM: I do, 100 percent. Yeah, I do. I would say it's a great year. The fact I showed the consistency I did and put myself in positions many times, but I could also go back in certain tournaments and certain moments where I made some mistakes, whether it's strategic or process mistakes, that I could have done better.

Over the course of a whole tournament, all it takes is one mistake sometimes to set you back enough to not win.

I also had two playoff losses and one hitting the flagstick, one where I hit a good putt it was just a misread and other people played good. So that can be a part of it as well. Some things are out of your control.

But I saw last year as a year of learning certain things. The best way I can explain it possibly is a year of growth and not necessarily golf related, right? It could be outside of golf. I think some of that has shown early in this year with two wins already and having a chance to win a couple others.

Q. Going back to Shane's question, you said you don't look back and think about what you could have done differently but you do learn. So what did you learn from the decision to go to LIV? What have you learned since making that decision?

JON RAHM: That is for me to know, and that's about that.

Q. Okay. Going back to Quail Hollow last year, after you finished, you said it was the most fun you had on the golf course in a while. In a year of growth, what did you learn from that Sunday and that tournament in general?

JON RAHM: There were some things I was working on with my swing that held me back -- like I've said a few times, it started in 2023 for various different reasons. It was just nice to go on a Sunday and actually feel as good as I did and enjoy the moment, even though I didn't finish the way I wanted to, right.

I really -- I wish that putt from long on 15 and an unfortunate drive on 16 and a bad process on 17, those three moments right there, I've learned things I could have done better. Besides that, those 30 minutes, it was a tournament in which I finally felt really comfortable with certain parts of my game and hitting certain shots.

That's why it was so enjoyable. It was really fun to be out there in the landscape nowadays in which as players in LIV we hear a lot of things from articles, from social media, from comments. While I understand why things are being said, it's something you have to deal with.

To go on that Sunday playing against Scottie, that has the lead, and to feel the support and love from the crowd is what made it really enjoyable. To realize that sometimes the truth is very different from what this makes or made up to be. When I made that birdie putt on 11 and I hit those good shots on 12 and 13 and almost made the putt on 13, the support from the crowd and the cheering from the crowd was what made it so much fun.

It was a realization of having such support from the crowd and playing good golf that made me realize in a way how I'm truly perceived from the public, as opposed to what I read sometimes.

Q. You said that you felt like you were under the radar for your Masters win. You'd won twice that January. You'd won that February. I guess, like, have you generally felt like you've been under the radar. And even like in kind of bigger picture question, since you ascended to World No. 1, how cognizant have you been about where you are in like that best-player-in-the-world conversation?

JON RAHM: Honestly, I think we're all aware enough to know where we stand on that ranking. When I said "under the radar," it's because in that month of March, I actually played pretty bad. It's not like right when I was getting questioned at Augusta, it was not about the three tournaments I'd won; it was about how poorly I'd played the previous two weeks, which is not always indicative of how way things are, obviously, as it showed that week.

It's just funny, you get in that press conference, and feel like, well, as good as I played this year, nobody's expects anything from me this week. It's just funny, in that sense.

When it comes to the rankings, obviously it's a little trickier nowadays, even though we're getting some points in LIV. Still, I think as players, we know we usually have a fairly good assessment of where we stand. I don't really necessarily need a ranking to tell me where I'm at or where I feel like I'm at.

Q. So what would that assessment be?

JON RAHM: Well, this year, I'm not going to get into specifics. I will just say I feel like the way I've played, including the last three years, I would say I feel like I'm -- I should be -- I feel like I'm playing better than the ranking I have right now.

I'm not going to get into the details of what number I would be because I don't want to insult any player who doesn't play fantastic golf, but I feel like higher than I am right now, that would be fair.

Q. With all the noise surrounding the future of LIV, how do you compartmentalize and make sure it doesn't become a distraction coming into a big event such as this week?

JON RAHM: Yeah, it is something we've had to deal with, obviously, the week of Mexico and last week a little bit more, but it's just some things that are out of my control.

I think I said it last week, out of the few talents I have in my life, fixing a business is not one of them. I might be the worst person for that.

So my job is to play golf, luckily. I'm decent at it. And that's what I can focus on, right. What I can focus on is the next shot. It's the people in charge of LIV, whose job I do not envy for a second, not now, not when things are going good because it's not something I think I can do. It's their job to fix it.

So when it comes to compartmentalizing, when you see it from that point of view, there's really not much to it. I have faith in the work that they're doing. I have faith that they're going to come up with a good plan.

Until that plan is explained to us, it's essentially -- not that there isn't anything to worry about, but I don't think I need to add any attention to it.

Q. But you say it's something you can't control. In my experience, golfers like being in control of most things. So is that discomforting?

JON RAHM: You know, I'm going to speak for myself here. It is funny in a sport that we like to be in control so much, how little we are actually in control. Because once you hit the ball, that's it. You're in control of what you think, what you're feeling.

For, essentially, a sport in which the result of the shot is pretty much completely deterministic to what we do, knowing that it's our fault how much we deflect, at least I deflect, is just a funny irony within that of knowing that I'm in control; knowing that I'm the one doing things; how much I can deflect in the moment or that it wasn't my fault because sometimes it's just hard to accept that it's your fault.

So in that sense, yeah, you want to be in control, but I'm in control of my golf game. I'm not in control of everything else, right. That's why it's -- I can see how it could be hard, but not really.