
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY | Jon Rahm has not looked himself these past weeks. He was not a feature at the Masters where he, the defending champion, tied for 45th. After a 72 on a wet and dank Friday at Valhalla Golf Club and a 36-hole total of even-par 142, he was well out of contention at the PGA Championship as well.
There was something symbolic about an 8-foot putt he faced on the 18th, his ninth, in his second round. The ball passed the hole before it began to curl as intended, causing Rahm to look to the heavens. His knees buckled and he muttered, and a Rahm mutter is quite something. The skies were gray. It was raining. For him at that moment, golf must have seemed a little less pleasant than it once was.
The 29-year-old Spaniard, who is normally so expressive and demonstrative and a strong contender in almost every event he enters, would never be mistaken for the uber-relaxed Freddie Couples in his approach to life. It is just that these days, Rahm, ranked fifth in the world who caused such a stir last December when he joined LIV Golf, seems more edgy than he once was, more voluble on a golf course and demonstrative.
He threw a club on the 16th hole of his first round at the PGA Championship at Valhalla and it was not a gentle toss but a shoulders-back-and-firm-follow-through type of throw. One of a very angry man. The question then is this: Is there something wrong with Rahm, the talisman for Europe in the Ryder Cup, the bearded bear of a man from Barrika in northern Spain? He has not won a tournament since the 2023 Masters.
“I don’t think my game is in any sort of issues,” he said on the eve of the PGA. “I didn’t play good at Augusta, but so far I haven’t missed a top 10.” He might have pointed out but didn’t that after Thursday’s first round, he had played 26 rounds in the 60s in major championships since 2020, tied on that number with Scottie Scheffler, and one round behind Rory McIlroy. “I know it’s smaller fields,” he said of the 54-man LIV Golf tournament format, “but I’ve been playing good golf. It’s just the one major that I played clearly wasn’t great.
“Have I played my best golf?” he said rhetorically. “No … and when I say I’m not playing my best, I just hadn’t had my ‘A’ game for a week yet, but I still feel I’ve been close to my ‘A’ game and ‘B+’ multiple times, so, yeah, I’m comfortable how I played this year.”
That’s it from the man himself. It has to be said, however, that he hasn’t looked as though he is happy or comfortable with his golf this year. To borrow again and slightly alter a description from PG Wodehouse, the late British writer, Rahm might not be disgruntled, but he certainly looks far from gruntled.
Here are three opinions about the Rahm of recent times. A fellow journalist said: “He seemed uncomfortable with his new reality at Augusta.” By this he meant that at Augusta when he was playing his first major championship since joining LIV Golf, he looked as though he had not settled into his new role.
The second is from a man who watched the Masters on television at his home in England: “I thought Jon Rahm looked entitled all week.”
“I still want to support the PGA Tour. And I think that’s an important distinction to make. I don’t feel like I’m on the other side. I’m just playing there.” – Jon Rahm
The third is from a man who chatted to Rahm as they waited for refreshments in a players’ lounge at Augusta. “He seemed very chatty and relaxed. I thought he was in a good mood.”
Rahm is spiky when asked about the disarray that exists in professional golf at present. He gives a good impression of someone who does not fully understand either why he was suspended from the PGA Tour for moving to LIV Golf or the depth of feeling against him generated by that move. “I want to wring his neck,” Arron Oberholser, the former PGA Tour player and now a TV commentator, said about Rahm. Rahm is reported to have said that at Augusta he felt there were those players who ignored him.
“See you guys keep saying ‘the other side,’ but I’m still a PGA Tour member, whether suspended or not,” he said on Tuesday. “I still want to support the PGA Tour. And I think that’s an important distinction to make. I don’t feel like I’m on the other side. I’m just playing there.”
He also has repeated his desire to play for Europe in next year’s Ryder Cup, pointing out that he still remains a DP World Tour player. To be on the European team at Bethpage Black in September 2025, current regulations require him to play four tournaments on the DP World Tour, which could be difficult with the expected birth later this year of he and wife Kelley’s third child. He also will have to pay backdated fines for competing in rival events.

“I said I would do whatever I can to get into that Ryder Cup team, and I made that commitment to Luke [Donald, the captain], and I want to be able to be a part of it,” Rahm said. “It does come to a point where I might need to play four events late in the year, but you know, can’t really get in the way of life in that sense, right, literally. I mean, it’s our third child, so I wouldn’t miss that for the world, and if I have to play a little bit more in the fall, I will.”
And speaking of the Ryder Cup, he told a story about how impressed he had been when playing with Nicolai Højgaard, the young Dane, in Rome last year.
“He’s an incredible young man with such discipline and talent,” Rahm said. “He definitely made an impression on me. It was a very enjoyable round of golf, and on that 18th hole before I luckily made that putt to tie the match [against Americans Scottie Scheffler and Brooks Koepka in Friday afternoon four-balls], he just gave me a little nugget, a little sentence that’s almost giving me chills thinking about it. Like we’re walking up and he has a birdie putt, and we know we’re going to probably need an eagle, and he looks at me and he’s like, you know, ‘Do what Seve would do,’ right?… The putt goes in and afterwards when we were celebrating, he says, ‘I told you. I told you.’”
There was joy in Rahm’s play then, less than one year ago. There doesn’t seem to be much these days.