(Update: Rahm later withdrew from the U.S. Open on Tuesday. See the full story here.)
PINEHURST, N.C. — Jon Rahm entered the interview area at the 124th U.S. Open wearing a flip-flop on his left foot and a golf cleat on his right. It didn’t take long for him to be asked about the condition of his infected toe and what it could mean for his playing status.
“Oh, it’s a concern,” he said. “It’s doing better. It’s doing better. But definitely still in pain.”
Rahm withdrew during Saturday’s second round after six holes of LIV Golf’s event at Golf Club of Houston in Humble, Texas. Asked to explain what caused the injury, he said, “We’ve been trying to figure it out because I think that the closest term would be a lesion on the skin. If I were to show you, it’s a little low in between my pinky toe and the next toe.”
Rahm, the winner of the 2021 U.S. Open, isn’t sure what happened but the bottom line is the area got infected and he was in visible pain during both rounds of the LIV event before exiting from the 54-hole tournament. On Saturday morning, before the start of his second round, he received a shot to numb the area that he said was supposed to deaden the pain for the whole round.
“By my second hole I was in pain already,” he said.
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Asked whether the decision to withdraw was a precautionary matter, he said, “Could I have dragged myself out there and posted some kind of a score? Yeah. But it was getting to a point where I wasn’t making the swings I wanted to make, and I could have hurt other parts of my swing just because of the pain.”
Rahm is coming off a season where he won the Masters and notched two more top-10s in major championships. Late last year, he joined LIV Golf and has been a non-factor at the first two majors, finishing T-45 at Augusta National and missing the cut at the PGA Championship at Valhalla, snapping his streak of 19 straight made cuts at the majors.
He didn’t exude confidence for this week’s test at the famed Donald Ross layout. Rahm said the infection of his toe is the worrisome part, but claimed that it has been controlled; swelling, however, remains a concern and the pain persists.
“There’s a reason I walked out here in a shoe and a flip-flop, trying to keep the area dry and trying to get that to heal as soon as possible,” he said. “But I can only do what I can do. The human body can only work so fast.”
Could Rahm’s ability to play this week be in jeopardy? “As to right now this week, I don’t know,” he said.