Jon Rahm, a three-time LIV champion wrapped in doubts

Jon Rahm is a champion wrapped in the doubts that now haunt his game and his future. The 31-year-old Basque golfer was crowned this Sunday in New York as the best in the individual LIV ranking, the Saudi League, for the third consecutive season, as many as the Spaniard has been competing in this groundbreaking circuit that split golf in two and now lives days of uncertainty due to its loss of funding.

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Rahm donned the champion’s ring for the third consecutive year and along the way a bonus of 18 million dollars, the last big individual prize that the Saudi League will award before entering a period of much less extravagance. The Spaniard has once again dominated the competition this season with an iron hand and consistency at the top far from any rival, although from more to less in a season that started strong and ends downhill with the feeling that his mind is on other concerns away from the game: in total, two wins this campaign, in Hong Kong closing the longest title drought of his career (539 days) and Mexico, four second places, a fifth, an eighth, a sixteenth and, in his last two participations, his two worst results since signing for LIV, 23rd in the UK and 41st in New York after a terrible final round of five strokes over par and a total of +8. Niemann won with -16, at a huge distance of 24 strokes, a rarity in Rahm’s performance, a player always among the best.

Rahm was crowned as the triple LIV champion, three out of three, when there is still another event to be played this season, in Indianapolis from August 20 to 23, as well as the team final in Michigan the following week. That will be the moment when LIV closes the curtain forever as it has been known until now. The Saudi Sovereign Fund, PIF, the patron who injected more than 5 billion dollars since the competition’s inception in 2022, has grown tired of spending without receiving a sporting or economic return commensurate with it, and this summer will shut off the petrodollar tap.

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The end of the party leads LIV to become LIV 2.0 next year, a circuit with fewer tournaments (presumably 10, five in the United States and five abroad) and with a much thinner prize pool than the current 30 million per tournament. The League CEO, Scott O’Neil, announced last Wednesday in New York the agreement with an investor by which the circuit will receive about 250 million currently, a significant discount compared to the PIF’s spending in recent years.

The new reality places the big stars like Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau at a crossroads and facing the dilemma of deciding whether to continue in the Saudi League (the Spaniard still has a contract and the American’s ends) giving up earning so many zeros, despite the promise of being shareholders of the teams, as O’Neil also announced, or to seek a way back to the American circuit, the PGA Tour with the sanctions that may entail. Rahm can knock on the door as the triple LIV champion that he is, although a champion in decline, wrapped in doubts about a game far from his best times, and a future that even he cannot now decipher.

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LIV New York Ranking.