AUGUSTA – A year ago, Jon Rahm came into town on a lightning bolt. That sizzle you heard was the bear-bodied Spaniard arriving at the Masters off five top-7 finishes in his previous eight starts on the PGA Tour – three wins included.
And when he won a green jacket to the surprise of absolutely no one - four-putting on the final green and still winning by four strokes - what a lovely sentimental journey it was. On that Sunday sundown, he paid homage after homage to the late Seve Ballesteros, the countryman who won twice here and was revered almost as much by this gallery as by Rahm himself.
A legacy-building championship framed in golden historical context, what could be better?
This year, Rahm returns to defend his title fresh off leading the Legion XIII LIV team to victory in Miami.
Good lord, golf is so messed up.
“It’s been fun to be part of a team,” Rahm said here Tuesday. Really? What team was that again? Legion XIII? LIV? The only roman numerals that truly belong in golf are those at the end of Davis Love III’s name.
None of us can know for sure exactly what kind of form Rahm will be bringing to Thursday’s start of the Masters. Such uncertainty was inevitable after he made the decision at the close of ‘23 to jump to the rival LIV golf league for a reported $350 million. He would disappear down the deep well drilled into the heart of the game by the Saudis. And not play particularly stirring golf once he got settled (finishes of 3-8-5-14-5 in five events to date). That big team win Saturday at Trump National Doral will have to sustain him.
Alas, he would not be spending this winter and spring at some of his favorite places after leaving the PGA Tour.
“Not being at Palm Springs, Torrey (Pines), Phoenix and L.A. wasn’t the easiest,” Rahm said Tuesday. “And I’ll keep saying that because those are venues that I absolutely love.”
After the break-up, he’s holding hope he and his old significant other can remain friends: “I still love the PGA Tour ... and I still hope that at some point I can compete there again.”
Sorry, man, your key doesn’t fit that door right now. You made your choice. No one is going to feel the least bit bad for you if you can’t get a courtesy car at the Waste Management Open right now.
He doesn’t seem to be a very political sort. But the fact is, Rahm and the other 12 LIV golfers here this week are tools for their breakaway republic. If you don’t believe that, check out the LIV website, anchored by the headline: “2024 Majors Preview: LIV Golfers Ready to Chase Glory.”
Instead of building a recognizable resume at events that anyone has heard of this year, Rahm has been fulfilling his duties to his Saudi employers at places like Myakoba (Mexico), Hong Kong, Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) and that most foreign place of all – Las Vegas. He’s been playing in 54-hole events against small fields, none of that providing any worthwhile clues to how he might fare here this week.
Rahm says the light playing schedule has left him refreshed more than anything.
He says the different competitive dynamic of LIV still has prepared him for the strain of trying to become only the fourth player to defend a Masters title (Nicklaus, Faldo and Woods are names of the other three).
“I understand there’s less people (in the LIV field). I understand the team format’s a little different. I understand we’re going shotgun and things are a little bit different to how they are in a PGA Tour event. But the pressure’s there. I want to win as badly as I wanted to win before I moved on to LIV.”
There were similar questions swirling around other former major champions who left for LIV back in 2023. They answered rather resoundingly – Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka tying for second, Patrick Reed finishing T-4.
It turns out that besides being a pretty good test of golf in its own right, the Masters can offer a decent argument for the talent level on that rival LIV tour. This is their chance to remind the world that they can still play some real golf, too.
The biggest load of poppycock coming from Rahm’s Tuesday presser revolved around the question: When you left for LIV, did you hope the impact might help to bring the game together?
Koepka couldn’t do that. Dustin Johnson couldn’t do that. Mickelson couldn’t do that. Yet, Rahm said yes, sort of.
“I understood my position, yes. And I understood that it could be, what I hoped, a step towards some kind of agreement,” he said. “But, unfortunately, it’s not up to me. But I would hope it would be something that would help expedite that process. But at the end of the day, I still did what I thought was best for myself.”
So, Jon Rahm, it turns out, is not Gandhi. He’s not Lincoln. He’s but a golfer operating out of his own self-interest, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Someone wondered how exactly he has been received here at Augusta National this week: As the defending champion or the most recent high profile defector to LIV?
“From what I’ve experienced so far, as a Masters champion,” he said.
That’s the best he could ever hope for this week. That title still plays pretty well here.
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