Jon Rahm sat on the court and seemed to have all the answers to the questions facing him and the fractured world of golf.
“There’s only one problem in life that has no solution, and that’s death. That’s it. Everything else has a solution,” Rahm said.
It was at the 2022 BMW PGA Championship when he was asked whether LIV Golf members should qualify for the Ryder Cup. He followed it with a warning. “If the European Tour really wants them to play and as a team we want them to play, I think a solution can be reached. If each side is not happy about that, I don’t know.”
That last stretch is where we now find Rahm, two Ryder Cup wins and a LIV Golf turn later, fighting a battle against the DP World Tour that has his Ryder Cup future hanging in the balance.
On Tuesday in Hong Kong, Rahm took the microphone, dressed in his Legion XIII gear, and faced questions about why he didn’t accept the DP World Tour olive branch when others, including Tyrrell Hatton, did. DP World Tour reached an agreement (independent of LIV Golf) with eight of its members to grant them conditional releases to compete in LIV events without accruing further sanctions. In order to play LIV’s 14-event schedule and be a DP World Tour member in good standing, players agreed to pay all outstanding fines, participate in additional designated DP World Tour tournaments and withdraw all pending appeals.
Rahm, who has said his fines total more than $3 million, disagreed with the deal. As he said four years ago, when every party is not happy, it is difficult to find common ground.
“I don’t like what they’re doing right now with the contract they’re making us sign,” Rahm said Tuesday. “I don’t like the conditions. They ask me to play at least six events and dictate where two of them should be, among other things I don’t agree with.
“I don’t know what game they’re trying to play right now, but it just seems like they’re somehow using our influence in the tournament and fining us and trying to take advantage both ways of what we have to offer, and it’s just – in a way they’re extorting players like me and young players who have nothing to do with the politics of the game. So I don’t like that situation and I don’t agree.”
Rahm went on to say that he has told the DP World Tour that if they lower the requirements to four tours, as stipulated in the membership guidelines, he will sign the deal. The DP World Tour wants LIV players to sign up for more to help shore up the tour they left in the lurch when they were shut out of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund money.
Of course, when he had pledged his “loyalty” to both the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour, Rahm realized that the European circuit needed players headed to LIV to continue competing on his tour. It was a vital part of the league’s survival.
“I think the PGA Tour will and can honestly survive without some great players going,” Rahm said at Wentworth in 2022, when asked if the DP World Tour should allow LIV players to compete if they remain members. “But the European Tour, there’s a lot of key players that have been key to European Tour golf and the Ryder Cup that have had a lot of collective years on the European Tour; for them to come (to the event), I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing.”
This has been the story of Jon Rahm. A generational player and student of the game who has found himself trying to find a very narrow path to what he wants: playing LIV Golf while also being a DP World Tour member and Ryder Cup eligible, but only playing the minimum number of tournaments required and not having to pay an additional penalty for his decision to jump into the rebel league.
Zooming in and taking the last four years as our sample, Rahm is the ultimate dichotomy, and his most recent decisions are following suit.
It’s Rahm on Tuesday who says he doesn’t want to be told what tournament to play without acknowledging that he signed up in a league that dictates most of his schedule. He did it voluntarily.
“I’ve always committed to playing the minimum requirements, and I think I’ve played four events, including the Spanish Open, every year but one as a professional, and I’m committed to doing that,” Rahm said. “That’s not going to change. I still fully intend to do that. Now, with LIV and primetime, I don’t think I’ll be able to do that until after the playoffs or our final events are over.”
But when he joined LIV in late 2023, it was Rahm who said he hoped his new league’s truncated schedule would allow him to do more in other circles.
“I can say that I want to maintain my PGA Tour and DP World status. I’m not going to give that up and hopefully with the freedom that LIV Golf gives me I can play in both of those tournaments as well,” Rahm said in 2023.
In 2022, when several LIV players sued the PGA Tour for entering the FedEx St. Jude, Rahm was convinced that actions have consequences and everyone should be prepared to lie in the bed they make.
“They chose to leave the PGA Tour, they chose to go join another tour knowing the consequences; and then to try to come back — and take the courts and justice down the road — I wouldn’t say, they’re going to sit extremely well with me,” Rahm said then.
On Tuesday, Rahm sang a different tune as he tries to tightrope walk to his favorite destination: anything that doesn’t make him do more to do good with DPWT.
“I’ve been a dual member my entire career, the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour,” Rahm said. “Now with LIV Golf being accepted into the world rankings as part of the ecosystem, you could almost say a three-tournament member, even though I’ve been suspended from the PGA Tour. But I’ve always been a dual-tournament member. I’ve never been asked for a release to play one of those tournaments. We’ve never submitted a release that we need all these penalties now and why should we have that offer now? why are they doing it, what’s the problem?”
With LIV Golf officially receiving World Golf Ranking points, it is clear that Rahm’s hope is that he can win his pending appeal with the UK’s Sports Resolutions arbitration panel – the same one that already ruled in favor of the DP World Tour in 2023 – based on a technicality. In Rahm’s mind, if LIV Golf is now a recognized part of the ecosystem, then the DP World Tour would be restricting trade by imposing sanctions against it.
That’s been Jon Rahm’s story for the last few years. One who claims to understand why things are the way they are, but is also trying to create a way for them to be different, and for that to be connected to who he is and what he is remembered for.
He’s the man who said he wanted to play for his “legacy” and that “$400 million” wouldn’t “change” his life. He then left for LIV and admitted that the money was enough to make him decide to try and “create” his own legacy. He is a two-time major winner and titan of the game who believes he is unfairly judged by four tournaments a year, but won’t admit that’s what he signed up for when he entered a breakaway league with a field strength equal to the Bahrain Championship. He is a European legend who lives for the Ryder Cup, even though he knew joining LIV Golf would potentially mean sacrificing that dream. He has become a Ryder Cup hero by checking his ego at the door, and yet it may be his unwillingness to do so here that puts him at risk going forward.
It’s a cruel twist of irony that the path Rahm is trying to navigate could lead him to a place of no return — a place where hard-earned European fans are lost and his legacy tarnished in a way that cannot be undone.
The rosters for the 2027 Ryder Cup are finalized in just 18 months, which begs two questions: How far is Rahm willing to walk down this narrow path? And how many European fans want to follow him too? His unwillingness to budge means these questions are now inextricably linked.
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