The Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucía Masters makes for an eventful week that goes beyond the purely sporting action. The social and family character of the event is reflected in a large number of initiatives featured for the week.

• On Wednesday, Sergio García, on behalf of his Foundation, presented the representatives of “Por una sonrisa” with €110,000 raised in the 2018 edition of the tournament. This association aims to improve the well-being of young cancer patients. In 2019, half of the funds raised during tournament week will go towards a cause promoted by tournament host through the Sergio Garcia Foundation, with the other half going to the European Tour Foundation. Up to now €60,000 were raised at Tuesday’s charity auction, with the star item being Sergio’s golf bag at the last Ryder Cup.

• Once again, the Royal Andalusian Golf Federation group starred in Wednesday’s Pro-Am. The team, made up by three promising juniors from Andalusia – Ana Amalia Pina, Marta López and Ángel Ayora – played nine holes with Benjamin Hebert in the morning and the second nine with Guido Migliozzi in the afternoon. Another local team qualified for the Pro-Am through the amateur tour Gran Copa Diputación. Manuel Huerta Paez, Antonio Ochoteco and Eva Camacho made up the Diputación de Cádiz team and had the opportunity to play with David Borda and Richard Sterne.

• Valderrama is the only Spanish course to play host to four different official European Tour events. They are the Volvo Masters (1988-1996 and 2002-2008), WGC – Mexico Championship (1999-2000), Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucía Masters (2010-2011 and 2017-2018) and Open de España (2016)

• At the par five 17th on Thursday, Haydn Porteous found the cup with his second shot – a six iron from 215 yards. This was the fourth albatross in Valderrama history and the third in this hole, after those made by McDowell and Jiménez.

• Former world number one Ai Miyazato is present at Real Club Valderrama this week. The nine time LPGA Tour winner has come support her brother Yusaku playing in the tournament.

• Pablo Larrazábal had a great performance on Thursday on the testy Valderrama greens. His 22 putts were the best of the day.

• One of the highlights of the day was the clinic promoted by the European Tour for 16 promising golfers from the junior squads of the Royal Andalusian Golf Federation. Pedro Oriol and Javi Colomo enjoyed conducting this clinic almost as much as did their attentive audience.

Sergio Garcia continued his remarkable love affair with Real Club Valderrama to sit just one shot off the lead after round one of the Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucía Masters hosted by the Sergio Garcia Foundation. The Spaniard has won the last three stagings of this event - in 2011, 2017 and 2018 - and has ten other top tens from 14 appearances at a course he admits is his favourite in the world.

An opening bogey-free round of 66 in Sotogrande left him amongst a group of five players at five under par, one shot behind Frenchman Victor Perez.

European Challenge Tour graduate Perez was also bogey-free in his round of 65 in an impressive start to his debut at the Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucía Masters.

South Africa's Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Malaysian Gavin Green, Swede Anton Karlsson and American Sihwan Kim are also one shot off the lead, with Welshman Bradley Dredge, Japan's Masahiro Kawamura, Frenchman Matthieu Pavon and American Julian Suri one shot further back at four under par.

South African Haydn Porteous, who recorded the third albatross of the season on the 17th hole, joins Spanish pair Pablo Larrazabal and Adri Arnaus amongst a group of ten players at three under par, while world number 11 Jon Rahm joins seven other players one shot further back after lighting up his round with a chip-in eagle on the 11th hole.

Player quotes
Victor Perez: “I'm very pleased to keep the card clean, it's one of the toughest places to do it. I was just really happy, we had a really good game plan going in to take advantage of the softer conditions.

“The fairway is key here. Once you start missing fairways, the greens are so small you're basically meant to be shortsided on your approaches into the greens. There's a lot of slope, it's fast and the greens are really small. The moment you start missing greens it gets tricky.

Sergio Garcia: “I love this place, there is no doubt about that. It kind of has something that helps me. Today was a great round, I hit the ball very well. It's probably the best that I've felt in quite a while.

“Even though the conditions were great, you still have to hit the shots in the right places and to be able to go bogey free here, it's always good.

“It's just the first round and we have to keep building on that and look forward to a good week. It's still Thursday, you've got to go one step at a time, there's still a lot of golf to be played.

Anton Karlsson: “I played great out there today. Had a bogey on the last, but it’s the only tee shot around here that you really have to draw the ball and I’m not really a drawer of the driver, so I’ve bogeyed that hole a few times before.

“Some solid golf, didn’t miss a lot of shots at all out there and that’s kind of what you have to do around here. It’s a great course, it’s definitely one of my favourites.”

Jon Rahm: “Things did turn around on 11 when I chipped it in. I was fully aware before the round started that if you play 12 to 15 even par it’s a great score. I was able to make par in those and then I hit a lot of good shots coming in, but I just didn’t make the putts I had.

“On the other hand, I was happy I two-putted the last because you just don’t want to finish on a bad note. Still, two under par is a great round; hopefully I can come early in the morning and do what the leaders did and shoot something lower.”

A new era for the event was heralded this year when Estrella Damm, the iconic premium lager brand of the Spanish brewing company Damm, became the new title sponsor in a significant five-year deal, which will also see the prize fund rise to €3,000,000 - an increase of €1,000,000 from 2018.

Tickets for the Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucía Masters 2019 hosted by the Sergio García Foundation are on sale now at the event website. For more information, see the event website, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

The Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucía Masters hosted by the Sergio García Foundation, an event in the European Tour’s Race to Dubai made possible by the essential contribution of the Real Club Valderrama, is sponsored by Estrella Damm and the Consejería de Turismo, Regeneración, Justicia y Administración Local of the Junta de Andalucía, jointly funded by EU and declared Event of Exceptional Public Interest by the Spanish Government. This tournament is also supported by the Diputación de Cádiz, Dubai Duty Free, Rolex, Exterior Plus, La Reserva Club de Sotogrande, Santander Private Banking and Shell. Callaway, Coca-Cola, Enterprise, Grupo Raga, ISDIN, Korporate Technologies Group, Marca, Maui Jim, el Hospital QuirónSalud Campo de Gibraltar, the Real Federación Andaluza de Golf and Volvo are official suppliers. 5J, Gadira, Grupo Joly and Varma collaborate in the event as well.

Sergio Garcia is aiming to continue his remarkable love affair with Real Club Valderrama as his Foundation once again hosts the Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucía Masters. The 2017 Masters Tournament champion arrives in southern Spain as a three-time winner of the event, after his victories in 2011, 2017 and 2018, but his record at Valderrama goes far beyond that.

The Spaniard was a runner up three times at the Volvo Masters with three other top tens, finished third at the 2016 Open de España and fifth back in 2000 at the WGC-American Express Championship.

It is no wonder then that Garcia regards Valderrama as his favourite golf course and he is delighted to be back and looking to challenge again.

One man looking to break Garcia’s hold on the trophy is compatriot Jon Rahm. The world number 11 is returning to the place where his family’s love for golf began, and he is keen to reverse his last appearance at this event in 2017 which resulted in a missed cut.

Rahm was a young child when friends of his father came round to watch the 1997 Ryder Cup being hosted in continental Europe for the first time and that was when the golfing bug was caught in the Rahm household.

Fast forward ten years and Rahm was attending his first European Tour event, watching future Ryder Cup playing partner Justin Rose win, with Captain Thomas Bjorn and several of his 2018 team-mates in the field.

A two-time Rolex Series winner, Rahm is now a peer of many of the men he watched play 12 years ago, and he admits none of it would have happened were it not for Valderrama.

Player quotes

Sergio Garcia:

"Coming back to Spain is always special but to come back to Valderrama, my favourite golf course where I have done so well, it's really really something else.

"I'm excited about it, excited about the week, excited about the tournament. I'm very thankful for Valderrama and Andalucía and Estrella Damm for all their efforts for making the tournament bigger and better and even better looking into the future.

"We’re excited to see how the course is going to play with good weather. It looks amazing, it's getting quite firm so it's going to be very challenging.

"The course is playing totally different than it has the past few years. There'll be some scores because it doesn't look like it's going to be too windy but I would expect it to be around the five or six under par that usually wins here.

"It’s true that I haven’t won this year, but I wouldn’t call it a bad year. I have played some good tournaments, but my sensations have not been consistently good. I am looking to recover my good sensations for the rest of the season, and this week could be the turning point."

Jon Rahm:

"The 1997 Ryder Cup, friends of my dad came over to watch it. They didn't know what it was and  they realised what a big deal it was and started playing golf because of that. I'm here because of that Ryder Cup.

"Then the Volvo Masters in 2007 when Justin Rose won is when I came to watch my first professional event. The first shot I ever saw anybody hit was Thomas Bjørn - a bunker shot on seven where he got up and down for par.

“Henrik Stenson signed my shirt, Paul Casey signed my shirt, some of my Ryder Cup team-mates signed my shirt and I ended up watching Justin Rose win. There's just a lot of memories and it's funny to see that I'm actually competing with those guys and being team-mates with a lot of them.

“I would love to take a small revenge from last year and play nicely this week. Last year I took the wrong strategy. I faced Valderrama as a U.S. course and started hitting drives everywhere. I know now that the key for me here is to make the right decisions off the tee.

“I would need to play really well to beat Sergio at Valderrama, because he loves this course and it suits his game very well. I would like nothing better than to be playing with Sergio in the last group on Sunday and give him a good fight.”

Jon Rahm will tee it up at the Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucía Masters hosted by the Sergio García Foundation from June 27-30 in the wake of sharing the third spot at Pebble Beach. His return to Valderrama, where he made his first appearance in Spain as a pro, is sure to attract big crowds, together with tournament host Sergio García.

Rahm is progressing steadily in his meteoric rise to the top with four top ten in the Majors since 2016, when he turned pro after a glittering amateur career both in Spain and the U.S. Besides breaking Jack Nicklaus’s record as the leading individual at the 2014 Eisenhower Trophy, he was the only player ever to win the prestigious Ben Hogan Award twice, in 2015 and 2016. His total of 60 weeks spent atop the World Amateur Golf Ranking is the all-time record.  

Having earned his European and PGA Tour cards the fast way, he had an impressive rookie season – he notched his maiden PGA Tour title at the Farmers Insurance Open in January, he earned his first European Tour victory at the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open by six strokes in July, and won the DP World Tour Championship, Dubai, the final event of the 2017 European Tour. Early in 2018 he reached a career-high ranking of No. 2 in the world. His emotional and spectacular win at the Open de España, together with his other international achievements, and his Ryder Cup debut in Paris, round up his remarkable statistics.

Out of his 80 professional tournaments since his debut at the 2015 Phoenix Open as an amateur, Rahm has achieved seven wins and 37 top ten (46.25%). He has won three of the nine regular European Tour events he has entered and got seven top ten (excluding Majors and WGC events). These numbers make up a conclusive statistic of 21 months as the leading Spaniard in the world rankings.

Next week Rahm will be looking to add to his record with a good performance at the Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucía Masters in a venue that played a big role in the origin of his career, as recalled by his father Edorta two years ago:   

“I belong to a group of sporting friends from Bilbao, and two of them were invited to the ’97 Ryder Cup. They had no idea of golf, but returned home full of enthusiasm. In June ’99, Eduardo Celles opened his golf academy in Bilbao, and four months later we started taking lessons. My wife Ángela, and our sons Jon and Eriz took up golf in 2003.” 

Rahm was two years of age when Valderrama famously staged The 1997 Ryder Cup, but his father took him to watch the 2007 Volvo Masters, where the lad enjoyed immensely having his shirt signed by his heroes and never got tired of watching some of the players who are now his rivals on tour or his Ryder Cup teammates, such as Sergio García, Ian Poulter, Paul Casey or Thomas Bjørn.

Ten years later Rahm returned as a superstar for the 2017 Andalucía Valderrama Masters, his first professional appearance on Spanish soil, but missed the cut.

“I believe the problem was mainly mental – too much pressure on myself, too big expectations.  I was playing well and I was very much looking forward to playing for the Spanish public. I tried too hard on every shot and didn’t allow my swing to flow. I put too much responsibility on myself to give a good show instead of playing within myself; but the public was great to me and I felt their support all along the way.”

Next week Rahm will share the headlines of the 2019 Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucía Masters with Sergio García, and he is determined to avenge the bitter experience of two years ago. Boosted by his recent performance at the U.S. Open, he returns to a course he loves with the same thrill that the lad who followed his sporting heroes for the first time.

“Valderrama is one of the best layouts I have played. It is visually attractive and wonderfully maintained. Golf courses don’t need to measure 10,000 yards to be challenging. I find Valderrama very exciting and a good test. You really have to think your way through and play all kinds of shots. Mistakes can be costly, so it keeps you on your toes.

“The boy that went to Valderrama in 2007 is still there, with the same dreams and the same ambition. I am extremely fortunate that my dreams are coming true.”

Tickets for the Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucía Masters 2019 hosted by the Sergio García Foundation are on sale now at the event website, starting from just €7 for juniors and €18 for adults (free entry for children aged under 12 when accompanied by an adult). For more information, see the event website, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

The Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucía Masters hosted by the Sergio García Foundation, an event in the European Tour’s Race to Dubai made possible by the essential contribution of the Real Club Valderrama, is sponsored by Estrella Damm and the Consejería de Turismo, Regeneración, Justicia y Administración Local of the Junta de Andalucía, jointly funded by EU and declared Event of Exceptional Public Interest by the Spanish Government. This tournament is also supported by Diputación de Cádiz, Dubai Duty Free, Rolex, Exterior Plus, La Reserva Club de Sotogrande, Santander Private Banking and Shell. Callaway, Coca-Cola, Enterprise, Grupo Raga, ISDIN, Korporate Technologies Group, Marca, Maui Jim, the Hospital QuirónSalud Campo de Gibraltar, the Real Federación Andaluza de Golf and Volvo are official suppliers. 5J, Gadira, Grupo Joly and Varma collaborate in the event as well.