LIV Golf Awaits Jon Rahm’s Next Gambit

I am convinced — based on a hundred conversations I’ve had over the last three years — that when Jon Rahm signed with LIV Golf in 2023, he did not think he was fracturing the world of professional golf. He believed he could be the impetus that could bring the two tours together.

He loved the idea of playing on both tours, of winning events in Phoenix and also, say, Valderrama. There was also some ego involved, the idea that he (and not Rory McIlroy or Scottie Scheffler) was the most important chess piece in golf’s civil war. Clearing $300 million guaranteed would be nice, of course, but Rahm always made it known he wasn’t motivated by money. What if he could accomplish what Seve Ballesteros never could, forcing the PGA Tour to the bargaining table to negotiate with players who wanted better compensation?

It would be a hell of a legacy.

Rahm has denied this, at least to some degree. This spring at the PGA Championship, Shane Ryan of Golf Digest asked him directly if uniting the two tours was part of his motivation for joining LIV. Rahm offered a denial, albeit with some clarification.

“Thinking that I was going to be any sort of weight that would tip the scales for things to come together, that was never an argument in my mind,” he said. “When asked if that was the case for people to come together, great. But I never made a decision based on that.”

It doesn’t matter, at this point, what motivation Rahm had for leaving. If he believed he could unite the two tours and get insanely rich in the process, he failed in one regard while succeeding in the other. But in an interesting twist of fate, he has once again been given the power to make a decision that could change the landscape of golf.

James Corrigan of the Telegraph reported on Thursday that several LIV sources are “almost resigned” to the reality that Rahm won’t stick around for LIV 2.0, and that the DP World Tour has already been made aware of Rahm’s intentions. If the last three years have taught us anything, it’s that minds can change, sources can lie, and alliances should be considered impermanent and malleable, so who knows what will happen. Corrigan's reporting, however, is far more trustworthy than the small collection of amateur mouthpieces who have been off and on LIV’s payroll in recent years. It feels fair to say that Rahm is mulling his future, and is (at minimum) skeptical of LIV’s.

What does LIV 2.0 look like if Rahm departs? There is a real chance it looks like nothing at all. For all the talk of LIV securing a new investor, something that was touted by LIV CEO Scott O’Neil last week at LIV Bedminster, what they’ve actually secured (for the moment) is a term sheet offering the league a line of credit. It might also be contingent on the big names, Rahm chiefly among them, sticking around. LIV with Bryson DeChambeau as its only true headliner sounds a lot like a version of DeChambeau’s YouTube channel — entertaining for certain people, but objectively not a serious competitive environment — and it’s likely it would not be long for this world.

Rahm can’t change the past. And it’s impossible to say, at this point, that he traded in the prime of his career for guaranteed money. That will be for historians to assess one day, likely when his career ends. What he can do at this point is accept that it didn’t play out the way he’d once hoped, and stop throwing more good years after bad. According to recent reporting by the Athletic’s Gabby Herzig, the DP World Tour is no longer interested in granting LIV players conditional releases to compete in conflicting events. It’s clear the DP World Tour smells blood in the water, and intends to batter LIV while it’s already on the ropes. If Rahm stays, he could be right back where he was a year ago, either paying fines or refusing to pay them and facing the loss of his Ryder Cup eligibility.

Rahm should look at it this way: He didn’t get all the money he was promised — some reports suggest he’s still owed $150 million — but he did earn $90 million in prize money, and whatever portion of his signing bonus the Saudi PIF did pay out. That’s still a windfall that will benefit his grandkids and beyond. Trading more of his dignity so that he can be a stakeholder (or a creditor) in whatever financial boondoggle LIV is cooking up now is a losing proposition.

He has a chance to get back his old life and begin competing once again in the cauldron that previously made him great. Spare me the talk of how Rahm won LIV’s individual championship three years in a row, and how his game never actually slipped. We can all see with our own eyes the difference in his game. He was a force of nature back in 2023. He can become one again once he finds peace and motivation. Not everyone gets a second chance to push reset once they take a big risk with their career, but he has one in front of him.

I’m not interested in shaming Rahm, or hectoring him into admitting he made a mistake if he does leave LIV and begin the process of finding his way back to the PGA Tour. There will certainly be people who are, who will heckle him at every turn, but I don’t see the point. The game would be better off if Rahm was playing against Scheffler and McIlroy more often. It may be a while before we get that again, but the opportunity is there to course correct and put things in motion for 2028.

There was a moment, back in 2023, when Rahm looked like he might be the winning move in Phil Mickelson’s infamous game of chess. When he donned that black letterman’s jacket, he looked like the real-world equivalent of one side declaring checkmate.

He could still be that, just not for the side we expected.