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By Kent Gray
Jon Rahm hopes it’s a case of third time lucky as he sets out on Earth to defend his DP World Tour Championship title this week.

The 24-year-old Spaniard has made a decent fist of defending two of the three titles he won last season, finishing T-29 at the Farmers Insurance Open on the PGA Tour and T-4 at the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open, two shots adrift of the Scot Russell Knox.

“It’s going to be Hard to improve on what I did last year but it feels great,” Raham said.

“You know, I was able to be defending champion for three events this year. In Torrey, I played great the first two days. I was in the final group. I didn’t play great on the weekend.

“In Ireland, I was doing okay. I was doing good until that second hole, a triple-bogey doesn’t help, but I still battled back and almost got myself into the playoff. So hopefully, I’ve gotten close and maybe this progression continues and I’m able to defend this week.”

Rahm comes into the Race to Dubai decider after on the back of a decent season – he won a third European Tour title at the Open de Espana and sits 13th in the Race to Dubai standings, and the Career Builder Challenge for his second PGA Tour title.

He also has form in Rolex Series events with two wins in his six starts in the European Tour’s elite events – and top 15s in all of them.

“Clearly I’m doing something right, if I finished top 15 in all of them and won twice, so hopefully I can keep that going this week and have a chance to win again on Sunday,” said Rahm before being asked to rate his season.

“Well, I’m not going to do it based on last year because last year was a 10 out of 10. For what I set it out to be and how hard it was to live up to expectation, I’ll give it a 7½ out of 10. Winning two events, I’m still having a great year.

“There’s so many things I learned about myself this year. This is what I’m going to say is it was a year for a lot of personal growth. It was a great year to get engaged and start my life. I would say in personal and family matter way, it was such a great year; I’ll give it a 10 out of 10, and that’s what I was setting myself for this year.”

Rahm salutes the galleries on Earth after sealing the 2017 DP World Tour Championship.

After finishing fourth at the Masters, Rahm missed the cut at Shinnecock Hills and Carnoustie in the U.S. Open and 147th Open Championship before rebounding with a T-4 placing at the PGA Championship. It was an experience he will learn from as he looks ahead to 2019.

“I learned a lot of things that I don’t want to talk about, that I would never talk about in public. That’s between me, my fiancée and my family. But golf-wise, it’s a long year. I played four events in a row earlier in the year, and then in the middle didn’t play my best, so maybe looking to change that.”

While Rahm looks forward, you could be excused for thinking his press conference at Jumeriah Golf Estates on Wednesday was actually at Le Golf National given the heavy weighting of Ryder Cup questions. It was entirely predictable of course, given that Rahm responded after a disappointing start in Paris to famously beat Tiger Woods 2&1 in Sunday’s singles as Europe roared to their 17½ – 10½ victory.

“If I have to say the most special one [of his match against Tiger] it’s right before I stood up to the [match clinching]putt, walking towards it. Somebody in the crowd thought it was a great moment to yell, just at the top of their lungs, “Do it for Seve.” So, you know, it’s not that I did it for him, but to do it in the middle of the process and three seconds be ready…”

Rahm also recalled the aftermath of his disappointing Friday morning fourballs loss with Justin Rose, 1-down to Tony Finau and Brooks Koepka.

“Everybody went back out to play and I stayed — I was mad. I was very mad because I didn’t play good on the back nine. I was eating with Chema, and he talked to me, trying to help me out, and he got me through.

“And I told him, I’m like, “I can’t help to think that I left Rosey down, I let the team down and I let Thomas down. And he looked at me with a very Spanish angry face and he was like, ‘You don’t ever think that again.’ Started yelling at me for about 10 minutes. And I’m like, okay.

“Basically the one thing he made me realise, win or lose, you’re not letting anybody down. It’s golf; you win points, you lose points. He started sharing stories about him and Seve until he calmed me down.

“And then I learnt from my role was for the afternoon, which is basically act like I’m playing on the golf course and help the groups and get the crowds going and make them energetic and make sure people were hearing all the positive chants and try to have fun with it. So just to be able to get myself to make sure that it was like 12 of us were playing, even if only eight of them were hitting shots.”