By now, after weeks of intense speculation, it shouldn’t feel like a surprise that Jon Rahm chose LIV Golf over the PGA Tour.
The longer Rahm and his camp remained silent and the thicker the smoke, the more apparent it became that the reigning Masters champion – who not that long ago said $400 million would not change his life – had undergone a change of heart. Wearing a black jacket with the LIV Golf logo, Rahm made the announcement Thursday evening on Fox News in a nine-minute interview with anchor Bret Baier.
Rahm can couch it in any way he wants, but he did it for the money – reportedly upwards of $600 million, though Rahm declined to confirm the amount when questioned by Baier, claiming that it’s “private business.” Not everyone has a number, and Rahm seemed like that kind of person, but we have found out otherwise.
Why else would he leave the PGA Tour now for a Saudi-funded league that not only fractured the professional game but has also sapped some of the joy from the sport it wants to dominate?
This is the guy who said, “Truth be told, I could retire right now with what I’ve made and live a very happy life and not play golf again. So I’ve never really played the game of golf for monetary reasons. I play for the love of the game, and I want to play against the best in the world. … I’ve always been interested in history and legacy, and right now the PGA Tour has that.”
Does winning LIV Golf Mayakoba mean that much?
Pro golf, regardless of which side of the PGA Tour-LIV Golf divide one stands, is not better off than it was before LIV came along. LIV hasn’t so much changed the sport as broken it, but that’s because it could see weaknesses it could exploit and it feels as if the game is cannibalizing itself.
Some players and their managers now have generational wealth, and for some of them, making the jump to LIV was a good career move. Rahm, a 29-year-old Spaniard, is in his prime and has a long runway in the major championships, which he figures to win more of, but his eventual legacy has taken a sharp detour.
No matter how many majors Rahm wins, he still will be the guy who went for the money after professing his allegiance to the PGA Tour multiple times.
This is a dangerous moment for the PGA Tour. Its decades-long hold on professional golf is being threatened, and if there is a clarity of vision about what happens next, it’s been shrouded by the smoke from the Rahm fire.
There is a school of thought that perhaps Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth Public Investment Fund and Rahm used each other to leverage an agreement between the tour and the PIF. Neither side wins with the current division, no matter how much the Saudis spend.
Rahm is a sharp, thoughtful guy who plays the game with a rare passion. He’s not as popular with fans as Rory McIlroy or Tiger Woods, but he’s been gaining on them. Rahm is a brilliant player, with 11 PGA Tour victories and eight more on the DP World Tour, and LIV’s persistent pursuit of him speaks to the rival league’s commitment and, it’s fair to say, its sense of the PGA Tour’s vulnerability.
The move tells Woods, McIlroy, commissioner Jay Monahan and the others on the PGA Tour Policy Board that Rahm doesn’t trust them to do what’s best for him. It’s understandable if they see his move as a betrayal.
If Rahm is upset at the tour – and it has been made clear that he has been unhappy with its direction and leadership – did he offer to help fix the problems?
Was he unhappy with how the tour marketed him? He has earned more than $50 million in tour purses and tens of millions more beyond that, almost all of it based on what he’s done on the PGA Tour.
Apparently he wants more.
Rahm’s move is a potentially devastating blow to the PGA Tour, which has now lost marquee stars/major winners Rahm, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Cam Smith and Bryson DeChambeau among others to LIV.
The tour has been playing from behind since LIV’s arrival in 2022, and the impact of the shocking June 6 announcement about a framework agreement between the tour and PIF feels as if it has created more problems than the immense one it is intended to solve.
This is a dangerous moment for the PGA Tour. Its decades-long hold on professional golf is being threatened, and if there is a clarity of vision about what happens next, it’s been shrouded by the smoke from the Rahm fire.
Rahm’s move suggests the negotiations between the tour and the PIF aren’t going particularly well. If a deal were imminent, why would Rahm leave?
Maybe he knows the deal is going to fall apart, the tour will take on private investors and the Saudis will continue to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at players, eventually minimizing the PGA Tour. Or maybe he surmises that if the deal goes through, he will be able to play in PGA Tour events and collect his immense nine-figure signing bonus as well.
The goal should be getting the best players back together again in one place. The Rahm news makes that feel less likely, at least in the near term, with rumors of other player defections still bubbling.
People who believe in golf want to believe the game is different from other sports. At its core, it feels that way.
It is not, however, exempt from the realities of life and, at the professional level, the burdens of business. Golfers like to say that the game reveals who we really are.
Unfortunately, it feels that way these days.