“Officially moving to zone defense, baby Rahm #3 coming soon!”
With just more than a week before Jon Rahm begins his title defense at the Masters, the Spaniard shared some major news on social media: wife Kelley is pregnant with the couple’s third child.
“Officially moving to zone defense, baby Rahm #3 coming soon!” he wrote on X.
The 29-year-old Rahm, who defected to LIV Golf for a guaranteed contract reportedly of more than $400 million, included a photo in which he is holding his oldest child, son Kepa, who was born shortly before the Masters on April 3, 2021. Kepa’s left hand is gripping the three-picture strip of his mom’s ultrasound, while Kelley is holding Eneko, who joined the family on Aug. 5, 2022, just ahead of the FedEx Cup Playoffs.
The Rahms didn’t disclose any other details such as the sex of the baby or the due date.
Rahm is back in action next week at LIV’s Miami event at Trump Doral before he attempts to become the first player to defend his title at the Masters since Tiger Woods in 2001-02.
“Kelley, Eneko and big brother Kepa are all doing great.”
Just days before the start of the 2021 Masters, Jon Rahm became a dad when he and his wife, Kelley, welcomed their first child, Kepa Cahill Rahm.
On August 5, the Rahm family grew by one as the couple introduced the world to their second, Eneko Cahill Rahm.
“Eneko Cahill Rahm born on August 5th, feeling grateful for another healthy boy! Kelley, Eneko and big brother Kepa are all doing great,” Rahm wrote in a social media post Wednesday. “We have had an amazing last few days soaking in these amazing moments as a family of four. Now time for the playoffs!”
Eneko Cahill Rahm born on August 5th, feeling grateful for another healthy boy! Kelley, Eneko and big brother Kepa are all doing great. We have had an amazing last few days soaking in these amazing moments as a family of four. Now time for the playoffs! pic.twitter.com/gkIWcG7CGx
Both boys have Cahill as their middle name, which is their mother’s maiden name. Jon and Kelley met while attending Arizona State. They got married in December 2018.
Rahm tees off for the first round of the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis, Tennessee, on Thursday at 1:44 p.m. ET. He currently ranks 16th in the FedEx Cup standings.
Former Sun Devil upstaged by a fox which somehow made it onto the football field.
Jon Rahm is a proud Arizona State alum so you had to think he was excited to visit Sun Devil Stadium for ASU’s home football game against USC.
And of course he had the U.S. Open trophy in tow.
Rahm and wife Kelley were special guests for the evening, and during one break in the action, went on the field to show off the hardware and take in a little public adoration from the fans.
“Great to be back here,” he said in a selfie video posted later while hanging out on the sideline.
Rahm won the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in June. While at ASU, he won 11 times, second only to Phil Mickelson’s total of 16. He met Kelley, a track-and-field athlete at ASU so Saturday night brought everything full circle.
ASU won the game, snapping a two-game losing streak.
But neither the victory nor the appearance by a major champion is what had people talking the most. No, that honor goes to a fox that somehow found its way into the stadium and onto the field early in the first quarter.
There’s plenty of bonding at the biennial event, and not just among the players.
Certainly, the team aspect of the Ryder Cup makes this a spectacle like none other in golf, and while the teams get an opportunity to bond in atypical style, so do the wives and girlfriends, who are often in the spotlight during the biennial event.
Scottie Scheffler, eager to make his first appearance for the U.S. team in this week’s tournament at Whistling Straits, explained during Tuesday’s press conference how important spouses and partners can be.
“The wives and girlfriends are really involved, which I think is fun,” Scheffler said. “I think with everybody’s wives being there it’s very comfortable for everybody just to be in the team room hanging out, wives, girlfriends all getting to know each other as well as — I would say that’s probably better — the wives and girlfriends get to know each other because they don’t see each other on a daily basis, because we do.
“I’ve seen these 11 guys at the same events for the past two years, so I know all of them pretty well, but our wives don’t necessarily know each other.”
With the first tee shot fast approaching, here’s a look at the wives and families of the 2021 European Ryder Cup team. (Significant others for Viktor Hovland, Matt Fitzpatrick and Bernd Wiesberger were not included.)
Jon Rahm is a big believer in karma. “It felt like such a fairy tale story that I knew it was going to have a happy ending. I could just tell,” he said.
SAN DIEGO – Jon Rahm is a big believer in karma.
Fifteen days after he was informed that he had tested positive and had to withdraw from the PGA Tour’s Memorial Tournament despite holding a commanding six-stroke lead, the 26-year-old Spaniard sensed that the 121st U.S. Open at Torrey Pines belonged to him.
“It felt like such a fairy tale story that I knew it was going to have a happy ending. I could just tell, just going down the fairway after that first tee shot, that second shot, and that birdie, I knew there was something special in the air. I could just feel it. I just knew it,” he said. “It was like, man, this is my day; everything’s going to go right. I felt like that helped me become. I just knew that I could do it and believed it.”
Rahm woke up to crows on a cool overcast Father’s Day morning, his first time celebrating the occasion as a father, and poured himself a cup of coffee and pulled up a Call of Duty tournament from the night before featuring a team he follows, OpTic Chicago, and settled in to watch the 90-minute competition. Wife Kelley had noticed that he had been nervous the day before – which for Rahm means being quiet – but today she sensed a new-found calm on what would be a chaotic final round at the U.S. Open.
“I told my dad this is going to be really good or really bad,” Kelley said.
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Big things have been expected for Rahm for some time. He grew up in the Basque coastal town of Barrika, Spain, population 1,500, and met the great Seve Ballesteros just once before Seve died. Rahm was around 12 years old at a prize-giving ceremony. Two-time Masters champion Jose Maria Olazabal was there too.
“I knew who Olazábal was,” Rahm recalled. “I had no idea who Seve was and I shook Olazabal’s hand and I almost missed Seve. And my dad almost had a heart attack because I had the chance to shake Seve’s hand and I almost didn’t. I have that memory. I never got to meet him again, never got to speak to him again.”
Jon Rahm has Phil Mickelson after winning the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines Golf Course. (Photo: Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports)
But whether he knows it or not, Rahm has been compared with Seve ever since and chasing his records to be known as the greatest Spanish golfer. Rahm arrived in the U.S. in 2012 when then-Arizona State University men’s golf coach looked at Rahm’s position in the World Amateur Golf Ranking and sent him an e-mail offering a scholarship to play golf sight unseen. The next day Rahm accepted. He had never been to the United States, barely spoke English and he was not sure if college golf was for him. But he learned to speak fluently by repeating the lyrics to rap songs by Eminem and Kendrick Lamar. Rahm’s coach provided the necessary motivation, enforcing a stiff penalty of a burpee for every Spanish word Rahm uttered. His golf game? That translated in any language.
“His golf game was very refined from the first day he came to campus,” Tim Mickelson said.
At Arizona State, Rahm met Kelley, a javelin thrower on the track-and-field team, at a Halloween party her freshman year. She was dressed as an NFL replacement referee with a blindfold and walking cane, he as a SWAT officer, and she thought she was on a bathroom line, but it turned out to be a drink line. They began talking. Well, she did.
“I’m just going on and on and on and thinking he was the best listener ever,” she said.
Rahm kept a promise to his parents and stayed four years and graduated and wasted little time making his mark in the pro ranks. TaylorMade executive Keith Sbararo tells the story about how the first time he watched Rahm play he called Golf Channel analyst Tripp Isenhour and said he’d just met the sixth-best player in the world, and he still was an amateur.
“I may have sold Jon short when I said he was the sixth-best player in the world,” said Sbarbaro, who eventually signed Rahm to an endorsement deal.
Count Phil Mickelson among those who recognized raw talent when he saw it. He famously won a bet from fellow Tour pro Colt Knost, who gave Mickelson 2-to-1 odds that Rahm would reach the top 10 within a year of turning pro. Rahm did just that by May 2017.
“I can neither confirm nor deny that,” Tim Mickelson said of the wager with a smirk, “but I can tell you that neither of us would ever bet against Jon.”
Even before Rahm turned pro and notched his first PGA Tour title in dramatic fashion at the 2017 Farmers Insurance Open, Rahm and his wife have loved Torrey Pines and the surrounding area, which he said reminds him of home – from the coastline to the blue skies and temperate weather. He proposed to Kelley at Torrey Pines Reserve Park during a hike and they were married in nearby Del Mar. “I think it’s something that really just resonates with me,” he said, adding “I love Torrey and Torrey loves me.”
When Rahm reached World No. 1 last year, the expectations to win a major grew. All that seemingly was holding him back was his fiery temper. Rahm’s outbursts – from slamming clubs to smashing tee markers to foul language – have been well documented. Still, Tim Mickelson said he’s misunderstood by the public and his wife agreed.
“It’s very upsetting. People mistake his passion for anger. They want to see the highs but they don’t want to see the lows,” she said. “He’s tried before to be, you know, happy all the time and not show emotion but it just doesn’t work for him.”
Phil Mickelson called Rahm “a gentle giant,” and said, “he’s got the kindest heart, and yet he has a great fire and passion to the game.”
“He’s actually terribly shy off the golf course,” Kelley said. “At home, he only likes to go out to one restaurant because he only like to go where he knows the waiters and he knows where he’s going to sit.”
Shy off the course, but once his competitive juices start flowing, she said, “get him on the golf course and he wants to step on people’s necks.”
Jon Rahm and his family celebrate with the trophy after winning he U.S. Open golf tournament at Torrey Pines Golf Course. Mandatory Credit: Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports
***
The general consensus was that despite 12 victories heading into the U.S. Open – six on the PGA Tour and six on the European Tour – if Rahm could only learn to mask his emotions better and accept failure, his record would be even better. Rahm tried, but he always fell back on the excuse that getting mad helped him win tournaments. His caddie, Adam Hayes, feared he was trying too hard to act mature. Then along came Kepa in April. The proud new papa radiated joy when he arrived at the Masters, but that only lasted until he made his first bogey. During the third round of the PGA Championship, he behaved unprofessionally. His latest Mount Vesuvius eruption proved to be an A-ha-moment.
“I know I can perform at my best without showing my frustration so much. I made that deal with myself after the third round of the PGA. I wasn’t happy with how I ended, and I could have handled it better, and I vowed to myself to be a better role model for my son,” he said.
Kelley concedes it’s a cliché but she says the birth of their son changed Rahm for the better. When he tested positive for COVID-19 on June 5, he handled the situation with grace and said all the right things at his pre-U.S. Open press conference. It was the most telling sign that he could maintain his composure at the most mentally-taxing championship. Rahm also benefited from calls from European Ryder Cup captain Padraig Harrington who recounted how much like Rahm at the Memorial he was leading a tournament by five strokes after 54 holes when he was disqualified for signing the wrong scorecard. Harrington’s message: “He learned a lot more than he would ever learn from the win,” Rahm said.
Nick Faldo texted a similar story and emphasized how he had won the very next week. Rahm thought of those stories on Sunday as he faced a leaderboard with Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Louis Oosthuizen, Collin Morikawa, all major winners to boot. He tried to keep his head down and go about his own business, but the fans, who seemed to be in his corner all week, perhaps feeling he was owed one after the strange circumstances at the Memorial, kept telling him about the wild fluctuations on Sunday.
“I decided to embrace it. You see all those great names, and to myself I thought whoever wins this one is going to be the one who won a U.S. Open with a star-packed leaderboard,” he said.
Let’s not forget that Rahm is a believer in karma and he kept telling anyone who would listen that “something good is going to come. I don’t know what, but something good is going to come, and I felt it today out there on the golf course,” he said. “I just had to be close. I knew I could get it done.”
He got a grip on his temper in time to win the U.S. Open on the course he loves and reclaimed the No. 1 spot in the Official World Golf Ranking. He did so with two unforgettable putts. The first was a 25-foot putt at 17 to tie for the lead. None of this surprised his father, Edorta, who had been here in 2017 to see his son win for the first time and had arrived only a week earlier after not having seen his son for more than a year due to COVID. He recalled seeing his son make hundreds of putts as a kid at home in Spain always to win a major. Of the winning 18-foot left-to-right bending putt at the final hole, Rahm recalled how Lee Westwood had missed a similar putt to tie Rocco Mediate at the 2008 U.S. Open and aimed 3-4 feet to left.
“As soon as I made contact, I looked up and saw where the ball was going. It was exactly the speed and line I visualized, and I told myself, that’s in,” he said. “If you could see my thoughts with 10 feet to go, in my mind, I’m like that’s in the hole, and it went in.”
No Spaniard, not even Seve, had ever won the U.S. Open, just as no one had ever birdied the last two holes to win the U.S. Open by one shot until Rahm.
“He’s won two tournaments in a row. I don’t care what anyone says. He had that title [at the Memorial],” Rory McIlroy said. “It was unfortunate. Mentally, I think you have to be in a good place to bounce back from something like that. Obviously, he knew his game was there. He just had to go out and play the way he knows he can.
“And he’s obviously had success here at this golf course. I don’t think there’s a golf course where he can’t have success on. He’s that good of a player. He was a major champion in waiting. It was just a matter of time.”
Or as Rahm put it, the stars were aligned.
“It almost feels like it’s a movie that’s about to end and I’m going to wake up soon,” he said.
When he does, his name will be engraved on the silver trophy and he’ll have quite the story to tell Kepa some day.
Jon Rahm and wife Kelley are expecting the birth of their first son in the spring. Leaving Augusta National early is not out of the question.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Phil Mickelson once famously competed in the 1999 U.S. Open with his mind on home, as his wife Amy was close to delivering the couple’s first baby.
Fellow Sun Devil Jon Rahm could be facing a similar situation in April at the Masters, as his wife Kelley is pregnant with their first child.
For now, Rahm says he’s sticking to his playing schedule but is making backup plans.
“I think it’s second week of March is going to be week 36, and as my mom has told me, because she’s a midwife many times, starting that week it can come any day,” he said on Wednesday ahead of the Waste Management Phoenix Open.
“I’ve talked about it before and we’ve talked about it with her. No matter where I am and what I’m doing, if the phone rings I’m flying back, and I’m going back home to be there for the birth of my son. Before anybody asks, yes, if I’m at Augusta and I’m playing well and she starts getting, you know, starts, I’m flying back. I would never miss the birth of my first-born in a million years, or any born for that matter.”
The couple got married a little over a year ago. They met at Arizona State where he was the standout golfer and she was a track & field athlete.
Rahm’s already thinking ahead, so much so that he’s hoping to be allowed to bend one of the primary rules at Augusta National.
“I don’t know how we’re going to do it at Augusta because we can’t have our phones in. I might need to ask for an exception.”
