I first got into golf when I was six because of my dad. He was the one that took me to the course and I took up the game at the same time as my mum. At the time it was called Club de Golf Masia Bach and is now known as Club de Golf Barcelona. Since that day, I pretty much played every day.
The first time I decided I could play golf as a job was probably when I was around 10 or 11 years old. I used to play football as well and I used to split my time on both of those sports. It was when I was that age that I found out I didn’t have enough time to do both at a serious level, so I decided to stick with golf, and that became my life — practising and everything the sport requires. When I went to high school, my final four years, I played pretty good and that allowed me to get my scholarship in the US. So I made the good decision to head to the States and I played pretty good over there as well.
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I have always enjoyed playing golf and I am glad I made that first decision to take that route.
When you play in college, it is very similar to what we have here at LIV Golf. In college you play for yourself for amateur ranking points and college ranking points, but you are also playing for your team and your college. If you are not playing great individually, you still want to do well for your team and college. It is the same here on LIV Golf.
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There are differences too. In college, I used to live with the guys I played with. We would do everything together — go to classes, eat together, practise together — every day. In LIV, a lot of the time you do your own thing then come together and work together for each event. You can be a little more on your own off the course at LIV, but that team element at college, for sure, helped me play better here.
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I also played a lot of team golf before I started college, representing Spain in the European Boys’ Team Championship, European Amateur Team Championship, Junior Golf World Cup,
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Eisenhower Trophy and the Youth Olympics. I played for Spain for around seven years in these events and you would come together before an event — usually Madrid — then you would travel and stay together at the tournament. It was cool, and it is a good thing they do that in Europe, because when you go to college or even here in LIV Golf, you are used to that environment on and off the course from an early age.
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I was invited to play at Centurion in the first LIV Golf event as an amateur last year. It was great. It was not a difficult decision — with everything that was going on at the time — and I think I made a pretty good decision playing there as it gave me a lot of experience, as indeed all the other tournaments since. I knew and I know that I belonged here, but I still learn things every single day — things that a lot of these guys here already know. It was great to play Centurion and see a course that was pretty tough and play against some of the best players in the world, share the course with them and see how they score and how they play.
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There were a couple of things that made up my mind to cut short college and go professional. Having somewhere to play with LIV for a full year was unbelievable. It was a chance people from college don’t normally have. At the time, that was a super big deal because you are good as an amateur but you are nothing as a professional — nobody knows you, you don’t have anywhere to play and you have to start at the beginning like everybody else. Here at LIV, they gave me the chance to start against the best players in the world. That was the main influence in my decision to join LIV. You come from nearly nothing, avoid Q-Schools and all of that and you get straight in to play against the best in the world. It was a pretty easy decision to make.
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I won my first professional title at the Asian Tour International Series event in Singapore in October. I feel I have played a lot of quality golf recently and I knew that the victory was going to come at some point. I had a couple of rough finishes when I had been in with a chance of winning — especially in the UK International Series events at St Andrews and Close House, plus two top-10 finishes in LIV this year — but you just keep doing what you are doing and get the job done. I think I have always been good at that and I think I play well under pressure. I didn’t get over the line in the other events but I am glad to finally get that win.
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I am not sure what the future holds, but I love LIV and [team] Torque, and I love the job the League are doing, so I can hopefully stay here for as long as I can.
Main image: David Cannon/Getty Images
