Despite reports to the contrary, Jon Rahm insists he’s perfectly happy playing with LIV Golf.
In an interview with the New York Post on Thursday, Rahm shut down rumors that he was regretting his decision to leave the PGA Tour and that he was looking for a way back onto the tour. The former top-ranked golfer in the world is apparently very happy with where he’s at.
“There’s zero validity to what any of that said,” Rahm said. “I don’t know where it came from.”
Rahm was among the biggest names to make the jump over to LIV Golf in December, which earned him a reported $500 million payday and made him the second highest-paid athlete in the world behind only Cristiano Ronaldo. Rahm had been dominating on the PGA Tour before he left, too. He won four times in 2023, including at the Masters, and climbed to No. 1 in the Official World Golf Rankings. He also repeatedly denied the idea of wanting to join LIV Golf.
But like plenty before him, Rahm eventually joined the Saudi Arabian-backed league.
Since then, however, Rahm has largely struggled. He finished T45 at the Masters, missed the cut at the PGA Championship and then withdrew from the U.S. Open with a foot injury. He’s rallied a bit since, and finally picked up his first LIV Golf win. He also finished T7 at the British Open in July and finished in fifth at the Olympics, but early on he just seemed off. His drone incident at LIV Golf Nashville was a perfect example of that.
He’s even said at one point that he hoped he “can come back” to the Tour at some point to play at old events that he had won. But based on where negotiations are between the Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund — Tour commissioner Jay Monahan didn’t have much of an update when speaking at the Tour Championship on Wednesday — he won’t be able to do that anytime soon.
Then earlier this month, Golf Digest quoted an anonymous Tour insider who was certain that Rahm regretted his move.
“I am 100% positive that if Jon could give the money back to the Saudis and come back to the tour, he couldn’t write the check fast enough,” the source said. “Now there are only four times a year when he’s playing that anybody is remotely interested. He thought his stature in the game was secure no matter where he was playing, and it was a bad miscalculation.”
Rahm, however, slammed that report and insisted he was “very comfortable with my decision.”
“I don’t know why they feel the need to say that some of us are unhappy when we’re not,” Rahm said. “It’s one of the things that frustrates me a little bit, the fact that they can claim that there’s a source and there’s zero truth to it.”
As for his early struggles with LIV Golf, Rahm said that had nothing to do with being in a new league. His game just slipped.
“I don’t think the adjustment was that bad or that long,” he said. “I think it was more about me just not playing my best. I’m never going to blame the outside environment. You can maybe make that excuse for one or two weeks, but not for the entire first half of the season, right? So it was absolutely 100% me for the most part.”
