AUGUSTA, Ga. — Ten months have passed since the announcement of the framework agreement between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, the backer of LIV Golf, and a finalized deal to unite the game of has still not been reached. Jon Rahm, the reigning Masters champion, thought his recent departure to the rival upstart league could have sped things up.
The Spaniard turned out to be sorely mistaken.
On Tuesday at Augusta National, Rahm revealed he “hoped” his decision to join the Saudi-backed tour might help shift golf’s tectonic plates. Rahm is a top-three player in the world, an 11-time PGA Tour winner and a two-time major champion — but he defected to LIV Golf. Certainly, the move would have shaken things up a bit.
He opened the floodgates. If LIV could get Rahm, they could get just about anyone, the theory went. Pro golf would have no choice but to unify.
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 divided, with the four major championships serving as the only chances for top LIV and PGA Tour talent to compete on the same stages.
“I understood that it could be, what I hoped, a step toward some kind of agreement, yes,” Rahm said during a pre-tournament news conference, “Or more of an agreement or expedited agreement.”
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Since joining LIV, Rahm has discovered such a hope was in vain.
“But unfortunately, it’s not up to me,” Rahm said. “I would hope it would be something that would help expedite that process. But at the end of the day, I still did what I thought was best for myself.”
The Rahm comments came as additional clarification to a point he recently made on BBC Radio 5 Live. The 2021 U.S. Open champion explained his decision to join LIV was partly motivated by the fact that he could “be the start of a tipping point” for the game to move in a positive direction.
“The balance of golf could be disturbed a little bit,” Rahm said. “There were very few players that could have made a bigger impact than myself. Not to be patting myself on the back a little bit too much, but I understood the position that I was in.”
“What we all need to understand is that the second that framework agreement was worked on, everything changed. And that’s where the beginning of all this change happened.”
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(Photo: Reinhold Matay / USA Today)
