It is coming up for 40 years since Marta Figueras-Dotti, now the President of the LET, became the first, and so far, the only Spaniard to win what is now the AIG Women’s Open being played at Carnoustie this week. Carlotta Ciganda and Azahara Muñoz are seen as the most likely candidates to follow in her footsteps. But what of Nuria Iturrioz, a player with the unique advantage of having made a close-up study of two Spanish world No. 1s — Jon Rahm and Rafa Nadal?
Iturrioz, aged 25, attended the same high-performance sports academy in Madrid School as Rahm, while she lives just round the corner from Nadal. The tennis champion is a member at the same Son Servera golf resort as she. And Nadal is out on the golf course whenever he is not practicing on the club’s tennis courts.
Each of these stars, says Iturrioz, has helped her with her attitude. Rahm because he, like her, is a passionate player who has had to learn to keep his emotions in check, and Nadal because he has always kept things nicely under control. Indeed, Nadal is on record as saying that he has never broken a racket in anger and would stop playing if he ever did. Iturrioz played golf with him once and describes him as a scratch handicapper who stays with the same routine before every shot: “His swing isn’t that good but mentally he’s the best.”
Of Spain’s male major winners, only José Maria Olazábal was like Nadal in terms of temperament. Seve Ballesteros, who had five majors under his belt, had more than the occasional fiery exchange with referees. Sergio García once kicked a shoe — his own — down a Wentworth fairway, while Rahm has often taken his anger out on his clubs.
“Sometimes,” said Iturrioz, “people would tell us to control our emotions. But, though I don’t think it’s a good idea to break clubs or anything, I think we need to use our combination of energy and passion. We’re characters and we play our best when we play from the heart.
“Jon has become more and more mature and that’s what made him the player he is now. I’m learning to do the same. But I still think it’s important to get the balance right.”
Iturrioz, who won three LET events in her first four years as a professional, picked up on rather more than the all-important mental side of things from Rahm. For example, when she lost several months of play in her first year because of a pancreatic virus, it helped that she knew how hard a time Rahm had had with his right leg. As he revealed during the Open at Royal St George’s, he was born with a club foot and, in childhood, had to undergo one operation after another to get it sorted out. Then, in Madrid, he worked with the Titleist Performance Institute professionals to arrive at a swing which made the most of what he calls “my physical limitations.” All of which, you would have to think, maybe contributed to the example he set in outworking his fellow pupils at the school.
“We had classes from 8 to 10:30 and then we would practice our golf from 11 to 1:30,”recalled Iturrioz. “Lunch came next and, after that, we had half an hour to ourselves before the afternoon classes began.
“The rest of us would go on social media or do something fun. But Jon, would you believe, had a putting mat in his bedroom and did nothing but putt during that time. We would tell him, ‘You’re crazy,’ but that wasn’t going to stop him. He was a great guy and a good partying guy, but he knew exactly how good a golfer he wanted to be.
“Today, when I watch him on TV, I marvel at the trust he has in himself with his putting and I’m pretty sure it all dates back to that putting practice he did in Madrid. If he needs to hole putts like the ones he made to beat Louis Oosthuizen in the US Open (a 24-footer at the 17th and an 18-footer at the 18th) he thinks he’s going to make them, and I think it helps that everyone else is thinking that he’s going to make them.”
It goes without saying that Iturrioz thanks her lucky stars that Rahm and Nadal apart, she has two great Spaniards such as Ciganda and Muñoz as a source of inspiration. “They’re the ones I would expect to win a major before the rest of us because they’ve come close to winning the big ones so often and got such good records under their belts,” she said.
Yet she still believes that all of the Spaniards on the LPGA and LET tours can pull off the unexpected at any moment.
“It’s just a matter of things clicking into place in the right week,” she said. “You need good preparation; you need to be feeling good; you need to be focused and you need to be peaceful.”
Hopefully, she hadn’t forgotten that line about playing from the heart.