The Fairness Doctrine

Since donning the letterman’s jacket, Jon Rahm has acquitted himself well to the LIV Golf oeuvre as a top-10 machine and grievance merchant. Rahm has never finished outside the top 10 in his one and a half years with LIV (19 events), and won twice. There’s some wonder about why he has yet to win this year despite more top 10s, but aside from that, this record has gone relatively unnoticed or unheralded. This consideration, or lack thereof, prompted Rahm to suggest at the Masters that his 2024 play was “unfairly judged” by some notable major championship flops. 

But for players of Rahm’s caliber, whether they play on LIV or any of the pro tours, those are the standards by which we judge them: major championship activity, contention, and wins. It was not a disastrous 2024 major season, but Rahm had less of all that last year. He will undoubtedly have much more in the future. So how are we supposed to judge all his other play since he joined LIV? One particularly harsh judge might be Jon Rahm, who in a previously famous and level-headed assessment of his current competitive station said a LIV event is “not a real golf tournament.” 

That might be, to use Rahm’s term, an “unfair” judgment. One’s entitled to an evolution of opinion. But there are consequences for choices made. Some of them may be to your bank account. Some of them may be playing for negligible TV audiences and trips to Mexico and South Korea as PGA Championship prep. These all might be considered positive consequences depending on your point of view, though Rahm’s enthusiasm for the overnight trip to Korea did not exactly jump through the screen as he did a post-Mexico interview on his Legion XIII team win. 

A past version of Rahm himself would acknowledge there remains some ambiguity about how to weigh a player’s work on LIV. The fields are small, and the league is unequivocally weak beyond the top 10-12 players. The team element has not made much of a widespread impact so far, but a Legion XIII chase of the Fireballs could change that. A solo LIV win would help Rahm, but proceed to the next question of what to expect on the more familiar grounds where we’ve seen him compete.

Rahm chose LIV and with that choice came some isolation. He plies his trade on a different set of courses in significantly different competitive environments against a differently composed field of contractors. He has isolated himself from old DP World Tour and PGA Tour pals, who practically speaking, he sees much less, save for the majors and the Ryder Cup reacquaintance. He has largely avoided the scathing critiques that many LIV defectors faced in the earliest waves. He has remained likeable and mostly free from controversy or any lawsuits from his former tours. He has remained largely diplomatic, even to the point of delusion, when last year at the PGA Championship he suggested he was not on any “other side” and still a PGA Tour member and supporter. 

He also remains the last star player LIV has poached and the potential prolonger of the cold war, as Joel Beall posed earlier this year.

While other LIV player contracts are soon to expire and bring some level of freedom, Rahm is locked up longer than his star colleagues. Personally, he may be the happiest he has ever been. Competitively, he has not been his best over the past year at the events where we measure elite pros. If he dominates LIV Golf Korea this weekend, will that change the current questions about what’s to come? Not necessarily, and deep down, he might think that’s unfair, but he also may concede there’s some uncertainty about how to weigh it all. With the second major approaching, and given his immense talent, this makes him the most fascinating non-Rory study this summer.

Some Other Friday Notes

The Will Zalatoris withdrawal, the Gary Woodland withdrawal, and the deluge of rain that left TPC Craig Ranch under lift-clean-and-place rule did not exactly provide a boost of momentum for the already beleaguered CJ Cup Byron Nelson, where Scottie Scheffler leads by two after a 10-under 61. Maybe a Lanny Wadkins renovation of the course will do it next year?

In the long run, the fracture in golf may most benefit the international markets and fan bases. The mantra of making the sport “more global” has been hammered repeatedly by LIV supporters and Rory McIlroy and eventually the Tour talking heads themselves. This may happen. These markets may be seen and heard. But right now, this week is an exhibit of the messy landscape. There’s an event in Korea (LIV), but the best current Korean golfers (Sungjae Im, Ben An, Tom Kim, Si Woo Kim) are playing in Texas in some Frankenstein creation of an event sponsored by a Korean company that pays homage to a Texas touring legend. That’s a mess on all sides. 

Did the world need or was it crying out for a docuseries on BlueJack National?

‍This piece originally appeared in the Fried Egg Golf newsletter. Subscribe for free and receive golf news and insight every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.