Jon Rahm’s plan is simple – just stay at home in Scottsdale and wait this one out. The really tough bit is when he thinks of his quarantined family over 5,000 miles away in Spain.
Much of Rahm’s family live in Bilbao on the north coast where his mother, Angela Rodriguez, works as a midwife – she has been allowed to go to work at a clinic that is attached to the local hospital.
“Everybody’s there. I actually spoke with them this morning. I went to the grocery store, and I gave them a call since I knew they had nothing else to do,” Rahm said in an interview with Sports Illustrated.
“Everyone is in quarantine. My family is in great spirits. My grandma is the most spirited, most energetic 85-year-old you’ll ever meet. She’s trying to look on the bright side of everything so it’s always refreshing to talk with her, but it’s hard. She saw a family get taken home by the cops because they were out walking.
“My great aunt (in Madrid) has ALS and is in a nursing home where there’s been a confirmed case. She’s lost control of much of her body and there’s a confirmed case in her home and she can’t even close her mouth. That is giving us the biggest scare right now.”
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Any other year Rahm would be building up to Augusta but this year he is simply, like everyone else, keeping his distance from his neighbours though he does hope to still play a bit.
“I think in the back of our minds we thought, ‘if there’s one place that could pull this off and find a way it would be the Masters’,” Rahm added. “But I didn’t see any reason why we should do it. It was too much risk and didn’t make much sense. At the end of the day with everything going on, whether we play sports or the Masters, it’s not the biggest concern.
“I have my own cart, so as long as I’m the only one that is touching the cart, I should be OK. I’ll try to just stay at home, work out and wait and see. I might be erring on the side of extreme caution, but who knows? That’s where my mind is at right now.
“Whether I play golf or not right now is not on my radar.”
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