Rahm to LIV: More Turmoil at the Top
Spaniard's megabucks deal another piece in puzzling picture
Wearing a LIV Golf letter jacket, on FOX News, Jon Rahm Thursday night made official what had been swirling around for a long time, like a tornado lurking on the edge of town. The Spaniard who has settled in Scottsdale is leaving the PGA Tour for its Saudi Arabia-backed rival/potential partner for what is believed to be hundreds of millions of dollars. Rahm speaks three languages—Basque, Spanish and English—but lots of zeroes did the talking here.
With the announcement by Rahm, No. 3 in the world, the turgid world of men’s professional golf became more so. Nobody knows where this swollen river is flowing now, not after this action by “Rahmbo,” who had said LIV’s format and pay scale weren’t for him—until they were.
Of course, Rahm’s about-face came six months and a day after the PGA Tour’s own dramatic U-turn, when the American-based circuit suddenly and shockingly announced it had a framework agreement to partner with the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF), which underpins LIV Golf. The deal was a surprise most of all to the players on the PGA Tour, which for months had vilified in the harshest terms LIV and the golfers who had jumped ship. A definitive agreement is supposed to be finalized by the end of the year, but the Rahm signing would seem to put more than a few wrenches in that plan.
The 2021 U.S. Open and 2023 Masters champion, Rahm, 29, has stood out from the cast of young golfers to emerge over the last decade, a 30-inch waist being something he left behind in secondary school. Thick in the trunk, husky, recalling a young Jack Nicklaus, Rahm lashes the ball with a compact whack that makes Nick Price, a brisk swinger of days gone by, seem like Gene Littler. It works for him; now it works for LIV. Like Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and the others who took the disrupter’s money and ran, Rahm will have to have a new heading to handle his future victories on his new tour to go with 11 on the PGA Tour and 10 on the DP World Tour.
But the accounting of wins is the smallest of problems in this still-to-be-figured out new world golf order. As Bob Harig of Sports Illustrated wrote this week, “The PGA Tour finds itself in the throes of a harrowing time in its history, dealing with the realities of a rival that has driven the cost of business to levels that go beyond what it can handle.” Harig went on to note the worry and discontent of individual tournament organizers, first reported this fall by Sports Business Journal, who are being asked for more and more by the PGA Tour, with charitable donations a possible casualty in the crossfire of bloated purses. Will the volunteer labor that allows the current tournament model to exist be so eager if money is diverted from good causes to expand the winnings of already wealthy athletes? That is one of many questions to be answered in the new landscape.
“Men’s professional golf is in a sad place,” PGA Tour player Mackenzie Hughes, posted on X this morning. “The direction it’s headed right now isn’t healthy or good for the sport.”
Those who see LIV Golf, despite its funding source, as a plus for the game around the globe—who feel that the PGA Tour was victimized by an insular arrogance before being faced with a disruptive rival with copious funds to buy its place at the table—might disagree with Hughes’ operative adjective. He is inarguably right, though, that turmoil isn’t a sustainable destination. And, while Rahm counts his pre-Christmas bonanza, it’s worth noting that if a stocking is stuffed too full, it can fall from the mantle.
I for one am disgusted. With Rahm, LIV, the PGA Tour, Norman, Mickelson, and the Saudis. Not afraid to say it: pure greed. The beauty of golf at the highest levels had been tarnished.