David

Puig

David Puig was the first college player to sign a contract with LIV Golf.

In June 2022 he was given a spot at the inaugural event of the LIV Golf Invitational Series while still an amateur and claimed 40th place in the London opener.

He followed that up a month later by finishing 42nd in Bedminster and was ready to take his game to the next level.

Puig turned professional in September 2022 and made his pro debut at LIV Golf Invitational Chicago and also joined the Asian Tour.

The following year he celebrated four LIV Golf League team trophies with Torque GC team-mates Joaquin Niemann, Sebastian Munoz and Mito Pereira and recorded a season-best personal placing of fourth at LIV Golf Greenbrier.

The highlight of the year was his first professional win which came in October at the 2023 International Series Singapore on the Asian Tour.

Puig destroyed the field with a score of 19-under for the tournament, five strokes ahead of runner-up Jaewoong Eom, to become the youngest winner of an International Series event and earn the $360,000 prize money.

“It has been an awesome journey,” Puig said.

“I had a good opportunity to join LIV right after college and I think I took advantage of that and played pretty good this year.

“Also, I want to say thanks to my team, the Torque team, they have always been very helpful to me, and I learned a lot from them.

“Playing against these guys, it’s a dream come true, but I think I should be here and then today I showed that.”

After a final placing of 31st in the 2023 LIV Golf player standings, Puig became a free agent in the Open Zone, enabling him to take up an offer to be a part of Sergio Garcia’s Fireballs GC, an all-Spanish speaking team.

Before reporting for LIV duty though, Puig was making headlines again on the Asian Tour at the start of the year, lifting his second trophy in four months with victory at the 2024 Malaysian Open in February.

He carded a tournament total of 23-under to secure a two-stroke win ahead of Jeunghun Wang at The Mines Resort.

That win gave Puig entry to the 152nd Open Championship at Royal Troon in July but he missed the cut on his debut along with the likes of Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau.

It was a busy summer for Puig as he had qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics by virtue of making the cut at the US Open, his 55th-place finish in June pushing him above fellow Spaniard Jorge Campillo in the official world golf ranking.

Puig joined Jon Rahm representing Spain and finished T40 at Le Golf National in August’s Summer Olympics.

In the LIV Golf League his best personal performance was a T3 at LIV Golf Houston in June, while there was a team win to toast at LIV Golf Andalucia in July.

He ended the year 26th in the player standings and was signed up again for Fireballs.

Puig also achieved his highest placing in the official world golf ranking during 2024, hitting 91st place after a T12 finish at the Andalucia Masters in October.

David Puig’s caddie is Alberto Sanchez, another alumnus of Arizona State University who was a roommate of Jon Rahm at ASU.

Sanchez hails from Arizona and speaks Spanish thanks to his Mexican father. He and Rahm played college team golf together with Sun Devils and both turned pro in 2016.

As a player, Sanchez had spells on the PGA Tour Latinoamérica and Tour Canada and achieved T6 at the 2017 Cost Rica Classic.

With Puig’s career earnings from LIV Golf prize money reported to be $13,040,508 by National Club Golfer, that would mean Sanchez’s take would be around $1million assuming a cut of between five and 10% dependent on final placings.

Puig has a strong game in and around the greens but one area he has worked on is his swing.

He estimates that he is now able to drive the ball around 50-yards further than in his college days, even though he hasn’t changed much physically.

In 2024 he was fifth on the LIV Golf ranking for average driving distance off the tee with 318.2 yards.

“I work with Dave Phillips the TPI guy,” Puig told GOLF’s Subpar podcast.

“He’s great and he gives me some tips to keep getting better, but he doesn’t want to touch my short game, he thinks it’s one of my best parts.

“We kind of changed some setup stuff. I was a little bit this way with my upper body,” he said, leaning to his left, “and my lower body was kind of towards the right, so I would get stiff on top and it also caused me some lower back injuries.

“So I changed that and for sure it gave me some more distance and also consistency and also I feel better with my body so it was a good change.”

David Puig finished T3 at the 2024 Open de España in September with a mixed bag of top-tier golfing brands.

His driver is a popular choice for pro golfers, the Titleist TSR3 (10-degrees) with a Fujikura Ventus Black 7X shaft.

Puig’s 3-wood was a TaylorMade Qi10 (15-degrees) with a Fujikura Ventus Black 8X shaft and in place of the traditional long iron he carried a Ping iCrossover (4) with Fujikura Ventus Black HB 10X shaft.

Having already ticked off Titleist, TaylorMade and Ping there was another brand change for his iron set up, where he relied on Srixon Z Forged II (4 to 9-iron) with True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 shafts.

Puig had four wedges to choose from, three Cleveland RTX6 Tour Rack (46-degrees M10, 50-degrees M10 and 54-degrees M10) and a Titleist Vokey Wedgeworks (58- degrees L), all with True Temper Dynamic Gold S400 shafts.

For green work, Puig had the Scotty Cameron Phantom 9.5 Circle T putter and his favored ball was the Titleist ProV1.

The Barcelona-born golfer’s full name is David Puig Corrios, created in the traditional Spanish way of having a first name, then your father’s first surname followed by your mother’s first surname.

We refer to David Puig formally with just his father’s surname, similar to the way the names of golfing greats Severiano Ballesteros Sota and Jon Rahm Rodriguez are shortened.

To pronounce Puig, imagine it written down as ‘Pooj’ with a hard ‘j’ at the end, similar sounding to ‘luge’ and ‘rouge’.