Jon Rahm’s protection of the PGA Tour raised eyebrows on Tuesday on the PGA Championship.
Maddie Meyer/Getty Photos
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — It’s at all times awkward staying on good phrases with an outdated flame.
Someplace between the scorched-earth-ex and the definitely-still-in-love lies a contented medium that may be laborious to search out. Particularly if, like Jon Rahm, you by no means totally broke up within the first place.
In fact, we’re not speaking love, we’re speaking LIV. And when it got here to Rahm’s new employer on PGA Championship Tuesday, Rahm was feeling … maybe a little bit too keen on his outdated fling.
“See, you guys hold saying ‘the opposite aspect‘ however I’m nonetheless a PGA Tour member, whether or not suspended or not,” Rahm mentioned on Tuesday morning on the PGA Championship. “I nonetheless wish to help the PGA Tour. And I believe that’s an vital distinction to make.”
That distinction is the standing of his PGA Tour membership, which stays murky due to the ever-tedious trivia of the PGA Tour rulebook. Mainly, there are three classes of LIV Golf defections among the many taking part in class {of professional} golf. There are those that remained loyal to the Tour, those that freely parted with their Tour membership in favor of the greener pastures of LIV Golf after which there’s Rahm’s class: Those that by no means formally left the Tour, however who began taking part in for LIV Golf.
Confused? Allow us to clarify. When LIV was fashioned, the Tour had no formal solution to “ban” gamers from competitors by revoking their memberships. Moderately, the Tour’s solely disciplinary pathway was to droop those that violated Tour guidelines from competing in Tour occasions, with compounding penalties for every successive LIV occasion performed. Provided that this pathway left open the potential for a grand reunion, a small however notable contingent of LIV’s gamers continued to compete for the rival tour with out ever formally passing up their Tour memberships.
Rahm was chief amongst this contingent. The 2-time main winner was maybe LIV’s most congenial defection, leaving with the Tour late in 2023 with out a lot as a nasty phrase spoken by a lot of the Tour’s taking part in class. Gone had been the acrimony and explosiveness that joined so lots of the early defections, changed by a decidedly uncommon breed of judge-not-lest-ye-be-judged from the Tour holdouts.
Rahm is common, regarded by a lot of his friends as a good man, which figured into his therapy by his counterparts. On Tuesday, it was clear that for Rahm, the sensation is mutual.
“I don’t really feel like I’m on the opposite aspect,” Rahm mentioned. “I’m simply not taking part in there. That’s a minimum of for me personally.”
It was unusual to listen to Rahm communicate so glowingly of the Tour he left merrily for a lot of, many tens of millions of {dollars} final winter — and stranger nonetheless to listen to him triple-down on the sentiment of heat towards the Tour. Positive, it’s one factor to depart on amicable phrases, as Rahm’s LIV teammate Dustin Johnson did, however it’s one other solely to current a imaginative and prescient for golf that feels so incongruent with actuality.
For the foreseeable future, Rahm’s present and former employers are at struggle, and the standing of that struggle was affected in no small method by Rahm’s determination to depart. He undermined his fellow professionals, they usually’d have each cause to really feel jilted and galled by his decision-making, not sympathetic to a few of the hopes shared on Tuesday.
“Though I’m taking part in full-time on LIV Golf, I’ve mentioned many occasions, had I been allowed, I might have performed some [PGA Tour] occasions earlier within the 12 months,” Rahm mentioned. “And if allowed sooner or later and never conflicting with my schedule, I might play sooner or later.”
It didn’t take lengthy for the obliviousness of Rahm’s feedback to achieve the golf mainstream. Inside a couple of minutes of his press convention, Golf Channel’s Arron Oberholser stared right into a digital camera and mentioned he’d wish to “ring Rahm by the neck.”
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“He doesn’t get it,” Oberholser mentioned. “To today, he doesn’t get it.”
Oberholser’s criticism is truthful. In truth, it’s the precise form of critique Rahm mentioned he knew he’d get for becoming a member of LIV in December. However the truth that Rahm delivered his feedback anyway factors to a better subplot in Rahm’s LIV defection.
The reality is that it by no means made a lot sense for Rahm, a golfer who proudly presents as a scholar of sport’s historical past and legacy, to depart for a league with out both. And it makes loads of sense for Rahm, a golfer whose golf nerdom is aware of no bounds, to need a future through which he can freely chart his course amongst all of golf’s out there excursions.
Neither of these issues imply that Rahm deserves these rights. Some would argue (very saliently) that he surrendered them the second he signed on the dotted line. However it’s telling that LIV’s most high-profile arrival nonetheless needs the very best for his ex — and perhaps generally needs they had been nonetheless collectively.
“That’s why I believe it’s vital [to say I’m still a PGA Tour member],” Rahm mentioned. “The PGA Tour has given me a lot, and has given me this platform and the chance that I’m not likely going to show to the aspect and go in opposition to it, as a result of I’m not going in opposition to it.”
Ah, the issues we do for love.
