By DMac Golfs
LIV Golf, the PGA Tour, and Jon Rahm: Why I Get It
The LIV Golf and PGA Tour battle changed golf forever, and Jon Rahm leaving was the moment it got personal. Here is my honest position on LIV Golf, stated plainly: I have no problem with professional golfers making more money.
None. Zero. These guys have a narrow window, a few peak years where their body and their game are both cooperating at the same time, and if someone wants to write them a check with more zeros than the FedEx Cup ever dreamed of, that is between them and their accountant. Pro athletes should get paid. The money in sports tends to flow to the people who own the teams and the leagues and the broadcast rights, and any time it flows toward the players instead, I’m broadly in favor of it.
So no, I don’t begrudge Jon Rahm the bag. I don’t think Brooks Koepka is a traitor. I don’t think Bryson DeChambeau owes anyone an explanation.
What I think is: we all know who’s writing the checks. And we all know why. And I’ll leave it there, because you already know, and spelling it out doesn’t change anything.
What I actually want to talk about is what we lost.
I’m a Jon Rahm guy. Have been since he was at Arizona State, playing with this barely-contained fury that felt almost inappropriate for a college kid, like watching someone trying to fit a Category 4 storm into a golf shirt. He is one of the best ball-strikers I’ve ever watched. When he’s on, there’s a completeness to his game that reminds you why golf is worth watching in the first place.
I miss him on the PGA Tour. The PGA misses him, whether they’ll say it out loud or not.
I want Brooks and Bryson back. Not because I think they’re better than Rory or Scottie Scheffler or Tommy Fleetwood, I don’t, not right now, maybe not ever. But because I want to find out. I want the argument settled on a leaderboard on Sunday at Augusta, not inferred from separate events with separate fields and separate everything.
Brooks against Rory at a major. Bryson trying to overpower Augusta while Scottie quietly, calmly makes it look easy. Rahm in contention on the back nine on Sunday at a place where the back nine on Sunday actually means something.
That’s the sport I want to watch. That’s the sport I fell in love with.
The thing about competing against the best is that you have to actually do it.
You can win every LIV event that exists. You can shoot 58 in a field of 48 with a shotgun start and no cut. Good for you, genuinely. But it doesn’t answer the question. It doesn’t settle anything.
The PGA Tour isn’t perfect. The DP World Tour isn’t perfect. Golf’s governing bodies have made a mess of this in ways that would take three more posts to properly describe, and I’m not here to defend them.
But Rory is there. Scottie is there. Fleetwood is there. The best players in the world, competing every week, trying to beat each other on courses that have been testing golfers for a hundred years.
That’s where I want to watch Jon Rahm play.
I hope he comes back. I hope they all come back.
The argument will be a lot more interesting when it’s settled on the course.
DMac Golfs is a personal blog by a 16-handicap weekend golfer who thinks too much about professional golf he has no business analyzing.