I’ve grown up in a lot of different countries, Sweden, Spain, America and one of those places was Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. I spent three years there, which included my last two years of high school at the American School of Dubai. It was just a great place for golf and a great place to improve my game. So that’s where I really decided to take the next step to pursue it as a playing career.
The facilities and the courses, in the UAE are all just amazing. I was a member at Jumeirah Golf Estates, then I had all the amateur tournaments to play that the Emirates Golf Federation put together. They did a great job in trying to raise the game in the area, both by having big tournaments on the DP World Tour and Challenge Tour, then also for the amateurs and the younger guys to play in. We used to travel around the whole country and play all the best courses, Abu Dhabi National, Dubai Creek, literally everywhere.
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In the amateur tournaments the standard was really good. I’ve great memories The Els Club where I had a had a first round of six-under par, and then I played against a guy in the last round who had been on the Korn Ferry Tour. Beating him in a playoff was a huge building block for me especially being so young still. I had a few other successful tournaments in the region and I won the order of merit a couple times. It all definitely helped me grow my game.
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I’d always grown up studying in an International American School, so for me it was a pretty obvious decision to head over to the states where I enrolled in Arkansas State. My sister went to the University of Pennsylvania, so she helped me in the process. Going to Arkansas State to pursue my golf career was a great was to keep building on my steps to try get to the highest level.
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After I graduated, I had a pretty steady year on my first year on the Nordic Golf League. I wasn’t anywhere close to winning but it was just a matter of putting in the work and trusting it. That’s what I did this year and in the end it just became a receipt for my results in the tournaments by getting three wins to get promoted onto the Challenge Tour.
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When I started on the Challenge Tour in May initially it was all about building up my experience on the Tour. But in my second event out in Spain, I finished in a tie for third place and I felt like I belonged out here. It’s a lot easier to play out here when you feel like you deserve a spot. When you’ve actually put the work in and the results you’ve produced merits you a spot. So, now even though I’m a bit more confident, I’ve just been taking it tournament by tournament. Obviously the guys out here are very good, but they’re good anywhere you play. So in order to win, you still have to do the same stuff. Just keep it going day-by-day and just keep working on my game, keep working on my weaknesses and then the results will hopefully talk for themselves in the end.
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My goal gets updated all the time. In the beginning it was just to get some experience. But now I have a realistic chance of getting into the top 45. So, my goal is now just to be able to play all the events I can and get into China. Then if I make it all the way to Mallorca for the Grand Final in November then it will definitely go down as a great year. If I don’t, then I just have to keep working.
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Dubai will always feel like home for me, I still have a lot of friends out there. So I’ll go back during the winter time and play in a league called The Lions Den at The Els Club which is run by The Crippler. It’s a great, competitive league where a lot of pros come together during the winter to push each other. There’s a lot of players out here on the Challenge Tour who come and play there as well. So I’ll for sure go back to Dubai, I look forward to it every year.
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I knew you wanted to ask about my surname! It’s kind of funny because, even though I’m Swedish, I actually grew up in Spain for 10 years. So, for a long time people always thought I was Spanish and people used to think I was connected to Jon Rahm. When my sister was over in the U.S. everybody used to ask her about it, and she would say that we were that we were distant cousins as a joke. It’s obviously a great name to have, but at the same time I’m trying to build my own path with that name and connect it to my own successes.
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