Jon Rahm didn’t want to wait.
Standing on the 18th green at Yas Links on Sunday with a two-shot lead at the Abu Dhabi Championship, Rahm rolled his birdie putt to within an inch of the cup. He signed a short revolution, but Rahm’s moment was at hand. He could mark his dance and let his fellow players finish first, leaving the stage. Instead, Rahm paused, took off his hat, which no longer bore the XIII Legion logo, exhaled, and looked up at the sky, a weight that seemed to melt from his shoulders.
The last time we saw Rahm tee up, he finished dead last at the BMW PGA Championship. So he always wore his LIV Golf team. Still a man apparently struggling with the decision he did – which was antithetical to what he had shown to be – the impact he had on his game and the public blow he admitted to seeing and fighting. A man still trying to find a way to be the old Jon Rahm in a new reality.
But this week in Abu Dhabi was different because for the first time in four years, the world of golf is moving in a different direction. It began as several weeks over the last four years, when the players of the PGA Tour and LIV Golf coexist, with massive questions about things that are not on the course. But while starting with Rahm discussing his exit from LIV Golf and Rory McIlroy discussing how LIV tried to kill the DP World Tour, ended up with something the pro golf world has long needed.
A look at what’s coming next.
As the Abu Dhabi Championship finished its first round on Thursday, LIV Golf’s lawyers informed a bankruptcy court that the rebel league that was once an existential threat to the golf establishment had. he took his last breaths. BC Partners Global drew its funding from LIV 2.0, and the the league extended operations.
The death of LIV Golf it brought mild reactions from Tyrrell Hatton and Rahm in Abu Dhabi. Their choices were already made, and with them, the writing on the wall. A league that was once backed by $6 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund could now offer only player equity, modest purses and scarce playing opportunities. That was clearly of little or no interest to most players who are still in the prime of their careers, and LIV Golf quickly sank once it filed for Chapter 11.
“No reaction really,” Rahm told reporters in Abu Dhabi. “I had an idea of what could happen. My decision was already made to get out of it and continue. I said my little already about what I thought about LIV 2.0, and there is not much more that I can say. There are no feelings of regret. I am not the type of person to regret things. Nothing changes.”
Since LIV Golf fractured the professional world of golf in 2022, the discussion of unification and what the future of golf looked like surrounded every tournament where the players who spoke for the sport were present. But this weekend in Abu Dhabi, as LIV Golf was given its last rites, the sport moved forward with Rahm leading the way. The man who once pledged his “loyalty” to the PGA Tour, only to put on a LIV Golf letterman jacket and calcify golf’s civil war with a U-turn, pulled the torn cord on LIV 2.0, removed the team logos from his clothes and arrived in Abu Dhabi without an anchor that seemed to weigh in the last two years.
Rounds of 65, 67, and 66 put Rahm in the lead heading into Sunday at Yas Links. Abu Dhabi classification offers a a vision of what the future of the DP World Tour likely to be in 2027. There were Rahm and Hatton, two LIV defectors who will probably play their golf on the European Tour in 2027 as they try to make their way back to the PGA Tour. There were Rory McIlroy and Adam Scott, two of the main spokesmen for the PGA Tour during golf’s civil war. The DP World Tour expects 2027 to look a lot like that, with big names playing more frequently on their tour. Ex-LIVers will try to play their way back to the PGA Tour, while PGA Tour stars like McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood, and others will still be plying their trade on their home circuit, leading to a strengthened DP World Tour.
It was a glimpse of that immediate future, yes. But this week in Abu Dhabi was really a clear sign that the game has finally moved on, finally healed. That as the wreckage of LIV Golf sinks to the bottom of the golf sea, the questions that have been above the sport for four years begin to evaporate. Players who left will return to their respective tours in time; his transgressions will mostly be forgotten as golf – not the battle for the soul of the sport – takes center stage again.
Back at the PGA Championship in May, after the PIF had pulled funding from LIV, Rahm was confronted with the choice he made to leave the PGA Tour. He said he did not regret his choice, but had learned from it. He he did not disclose the lesson His seismic move was made, but he was adamant that he was there and would help him move forward in his quest to be reborn at the top of the game. I almost won that week at Aronimink and left with that secret in my pocket.
Months later, with his LIV ties cut, Jon Rahm arrived in Abu Dhabi, looking lighter. He and his wife had just welcomed their daughter into the world, and he said the “noise” he’d been dealing with had dissipated. Then Jon Rahm, who hadn’t won outside of LIV Golf since his defection, came out and beat a world-class field that included McIlroy, Hatton, Fleetwood and Eugenio Chacarra. As he did, everything seemed different – or as things were before talking about sovereign wealth funds, sports washing and square agreements took the wheel. There was only one of the best golfers in the world who finally looked again, with that lesson still only I know to know.
“You could say that,” Rahm said when asked if this win was the start of a new chapter. “One can say that. After everything that went on, and some poor games and some mental battles, right, with a lot of noise, to come back out after a little rest and being with the family, it’s pretty special.”
After his win, Rahm was asked about his mind over the past eight weeks. He was talking about the birth of his daughter and how his poor performance at Wentworth was because he didn’t want to miss it. But he also talked about a feeling he had been looking for — one that he said began to arrive in April and that had blocked the “noise” he had been fighting for the past few years.
“Let’s just say, it felt a little cloudy in a sense, and I can say that the calm I feel this week has been nice all week, honestly. I feel incredibly calm, even when things didn’t go as planned,” said Rahm. “It didn’t seem very annoying, and probably the main reason why I was able to do as well as I did.”
For two years, Rahm’s press conferences have been flooded with big existential questions about what his play says about the two tours and how he made his choice. But this week, after LIV’s obituary was written, there was very little of it.
There was Jon Rahm, a trophy, talking about iron shots and missed putts. There was talk of a star-studded lineup with whom he once shared a tour and will meet again in the future. There was Jon Rahm, finally a DP World Tour Rolex Series winner again, being the one who wrote the first words about what comes next for the pro golf world – a world that is no longer at war and is finally coming together.
“It’s on the next page, right,” a victorious Rahm said of his post-LIV world. : Fortunately in golf, I have been lucky enough to have many opportunities and take advantage of them, and I hope I can continue to do so.
