Jon Rahm’s protection of the PGA Tour raised eyebrows on Tuesday at the PGA Championship.
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. — It’s at all times awkward staying on good phrases with an outdated flame.
Somewhere between the scorched-earth-ex and the definitely-still-in-love lies a cheerful medium that may be arduous to search out. Especially if, like Jon Rahm, you by no means absolutely broke up within the first place.
Of course, 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And when it got here to Rahm’s new employer on PGA Championship Tuesday, Rahm was feeling … maybe a bit too keen on his outdated fling.
“See, you guys keep saying ‘the other side‘ but I’m still a PGA Tour member, whether suspended or not,” Rahm mentioned on Tuesday morning at the PGA Championship. “I still want to support the PGA Tour. And I think that’s an important distinction to make.”
That distinction is the standing of his PGA Tour membership, which stays murky because of the ever-tedious trivialities of the PGA Tour rulebook. Basically, there are three classes of LIV Golf defections among the many enjoying 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 who by no means formally left the Tour, however who began enjoying for LIV Golf.
Confused? Let us clarify. When LIV was fashioned, the Tour had no formal technique to “ban” gamers from competitors by revoking their memberships. Rather, 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. Given that this pathway left open the potential of 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 two-time main winner was maybe LIV’s most congenial defection, leaving with the Tour late in 2023 with out a lot as a foul phrase spoken by a lot of the Tour’s enjoying class. Gone had been the acrimony and explosiveness that joined so most of the early defections, changed by a decidedly uncommon breed of judge-not-lest-ye-be-judged from the Tour holdouts.
Rahm is widespread, regarded by lots 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 feel like I’m on the other side,” Rahm mentioned. “I’m just not playing there. That’s at least for me personally.”
It was unusual to listen to Rahm converse 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. Sure, it’s one factor to depart on amicable phrases, as Rahm’s LIV teammate Dustin Johnson did, nevertheless it’s one other completely 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 conflict, and the standing of that conflict was affected in no small means by Rahm’s determination to depart. He undermined his fellow professionals, and so they’d have each motive to really feel jilted and galled by his decision-making, not sympathetic to a number of the hopes shared on Tuesday.
“Even though I’m playing full-time on LIV Golf, I’ve said many times, had I been allowed, I would have played some [PGA Tour] events earlier in the year,” Rahm mentioned. “And if allowed in the future and not conflicting with my schedule, I would play in the future.”
It didn’t take lengthy for the obliviousness of Rahm’s feedback to succeed in the golf mainstream. Within 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 this day, he doesn’t get it.”
Oberholser’s criticism is honest. In reality, it’s the precise form of critique Rahm mentioned he knew he’d get for becoming a member of LIV in December. But the truth that Rahm delivered his feedback anyway factors to a better subplot in Rahm’s LIV defection.
The fact 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 wherein 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. But it’s telling that LIV’s most high-profile arrival nonetheless needs the most effective for his ex — and possibly generally needs they had been nonetheless collectively.
“That’s why I think it’s important [to say I’m still a PGA Tour member],” Rahm mentioned. “The PGA Tour has given me so much, and has given me this platform and the opportunity that I’m not really going to turn to the side and go against it, because I’m not going against it.”
Ah, the issues we do for love.
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