What Jon Rahm joining LIV means for golf
Yahoo Sports' Jay Busbee explains the significance of the 3rd-ranked player in the world leaving the PGA Tour for the Saudi-backed organization in the 2024 season.
Video Transcript
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JAY BUSBEE: The most important piece on the board in professional golf's ongoing chess match now belongs to LIV Golf. Jon Rahm, two-time major winner, defending masters champion, world number three, and Ryder Cup icon, will leave the PGA TOUR and join LIV Golf, starting in the 2024 season. It's almost impossible to overstate the seismic impact of this move on the fate of the PGA TOUR. Outside of Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, Rahm is the most important golfer on the planet, a charismatic ambassador of the game who just happens to be one of its finest players.
Losing the 29-year-old Rahm means losing a player who was on a trajectory to dominate golf for the next decade, a player who appears to be the next link in a chain of golf history that leads from McIlroy to Woods and back to Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and on and on into history. This is akin to the NFL losing Patrick Mahomes or the NBA losing Giannis, a body blow to the PGA TOUR.
Rahm's departure is a significant shock, given how opposed he had been to both the riches and the format of LIV Golf in the past. Back in early 2022, he pledged his, quote, "fealty to the PGA TOUR," saying that the PGA TOUR's legacy was more attractive to him than LIV's wealth. Since then, however, Rahm has won the Masters, which gives him a permanent entry into Augusta, as well as several years of exemptions into all the other majors.
And the PGA TOUR stunned its players by securing a negotiated-in-secret agreement with LIV's financial backers. Rahm's arrival marks the most successful day in the two-year history of LIV Golf and a tough, tough loss for the PGA TOUR. For Yahoo Sports, I'm Jay Busbee.