Jon Rahm: Jon Rahm, born to conquer | Sports

Jon Rahm has an ego that doesn’t even match the whole of Bilbao, say his critics, the same ones who call him a traitor or a hypocrite, but it is precisely this ego, this absolute desire to stand out from all the others, which made him the standard-bearer, the flag, of Saudi Arabia’s calculated madness in its megalomaniacal project to become the world’s sports empire. And all this is worth more, for him and to measure his importance in the world sports market, at its peak, than the economic weight of the 500 million euros he will receive for his defection from the old PGA Tour.

Only one player in his prime has been offered such a sum. Woods was offered more. But he is no longer a player. It’s a symbol. Rahm is unique.

No Spanish athlete could go that far, that high, one and only around which the world revolves. Not even Rafa Nadal, with his unparalleled track record and universal fame, but still one more in the holy trinity of tennis with Federer and Djokovic, not even the Fernando Alonso of his best years or Pau Gasol.

It’s not about fame, popularity or driving fans. This is the new world order in sport. To sit at the table of the Saudi crown prince, Mohamed Bin Salmán, and ask for part of his charity, Cristiano Ronaldo or the president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, and even the president of the IOC and owner of the five rings of the Games, line up the Olympians, Thomas Bach. A Spanish athlete is already sitting at this table.

No one doubts that if Rahm crossed the border of the LIV circuit, the PGA will find itself without any arsenal to defend its territory and will be forced to finally reach an agreement with the Saudi bosses, owners of the universe, and their sports leaders. monarchs. The golfer from Barrika (Bizkaia) has acquired such importance in the overall geopolitical strategy of sport.

Rahm, 29, two majors, a Masters and a U.S. Open, several other victories on tour and in the Ryder Cup, and a charisma that even Rory McIlroy, the other alpha male of world golf, cannot match , is a rarity in Spanish sport. He managed to put an end to the romantic halo that has always surrounded the founding father of Spanish golf, Seve Ballesteros, the greatest genius in the history of Spanish sport, a character whose weight in the evolution of his sport, in his revolution, has no importance. one, not even Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus, was up to the task, a unique being, arrogant and humble, with more of an artist’s soul than the navel of an aspirant to world domination, more inclined to engage in battles lost in advance than to take the train with calculation of the certain winner. . His heir, José María Olazabal, was happy to play without advertising on his cap or on his niki, as if the weight of stickers and advertisements was unbearable. Rahm has always been something else, a leader of Generation Z, those unafraid to lose but not to win, who left home as a child and without knowing English to grow up at the University of Phoenix , and there, perhaps, he discovered, stubborn and convinced that he was born to conquer.

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