AUGUSTA, Ga. — Ten months have passed since the announcement of the master agreement between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund, the backer of LIV Golf, and a finalized agreement to unify the game has still not been concluded. Jon Rahm, the reigning Masters champion, thought his recent departure to the upstart rival league might have speeded things up.
The Spaniard made a big mistake.
On Tuesday at Augusta National, Rahm revealed he was “hoping” his decision to join the Saudi-backed tour could help shift golf’s tectonic plates. Rahm is a top three player in the world, an 11-time PGA Tour winner and two-time major champion – but he has defected to LIV Golf. Certainly, this decision would have shaken things up a bit.
He opened the floodgates. If LIV could catch Rahm, they could catch just about anyone, the theory goes. Professional golf would have no choice but to unite.
But five months since Rahm appeared on Fox News in a LIV Golf letterman jacket to make the rumored jump official, little has changed. The game is still split, with the four major championships being the only chance for top LIV and PGA Tour talent to compete on the same stages.
“I understood that this could be, what I hoped, a step towards some kind of agreement, yes,” Rahm said at a press conference before the tournament, “Or rather an agreement or an agreement accelerated.”
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Since joining LIV, Rahm has discovered that such hope was in vain.
“But unfortunately it’s not up to me,” Rahm said. “Hopefully this will be something that helps speed up that process.” But in the end, I still did what I thought was best for me.
Rahm’s comments provided further clarification on one point he recently did on BBC Radio 5 Live. The 2021 US Open champion explained that his decision to join LIV was partly motivated by the fact that it could “be the start of a tipping point” for the game to move in a positive direction.
“The balance of golf might be disrupted a little bit,” Rahm said. “Very few players could have had a bigger impact than me. I don’t want to congratulate myself too much, but I understood the position I was in.
“What we all need to understand is that the second this framework agreement was developed, everything changed. And that’s where the beginning of all this change happened.
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(Photo: Reinhold Matay / USA Today)