If you are to believe Jon Rahm, his decision to leave the PGA Tour for LIV Golf was about the future of the sport.
Of course, the cash was helpful. Generally, nine-figure guarantees work. That was not the only issue, though. According to his account, the choice also had to do with golf, the chance to be a trailblazer, and the potential to reinvent a modern sport.
“Obviously, the past few years there’s been a lot of evolving in the game of golf,” Rahm said last Thursday, the day he signed a contract reportedly worth several hundred million dollars to play for the upstarts. “Seeing the growth of LIV Golf, seeing the evolution of LIV Golf, and the innovation is something that’s really captured my attention. That’s why we’re here today.”
In a spicy segment on his SiriusXM PGA Tour radio show on Monday evening, Fred Couples had his own thoughts on Rahm’s reasoning. Two words summed ’em up:
“My a**.”
Okay, there was more than just that.
“$100 million doesn’t get it, $200 million doesn’t get it, $300 million doesn’t get it, but for $400 million it’s a great product, and it’s a great show?” Couples said. “My a**, okay. Tell me the next guy, whether it’s Tony Finau, ‘I’m going for free, boys. I love this Tour. I don’t like the PGA Tour anymore.’ No one’s gonna do that.”
Couples has never been one to mince words, but the topic of LIV has brought an unusually strident perspective from the former major winner. Yes, Couples is a PGA Tour lifer, owing 15 of his 33 professional wins to the big tour and maintaining close relationships with many of its biggest stars, including Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas. But LIV seems to be a matter of principle.
In Couples’ mind, hearing pro after pro tout LIV’s “innovative format” and “commitment to growing the game” isn’t just a mild annoyance, it’s galling. Those who left the Tour for LIV left for one reason and one reason only — and it sure wasn’t ‘innovation.’
“I wanna see the next superstar say, ‘I’m going to LIV, you know why I’m going? because it is unreal.’” he said. “[The PGA Tour plays] Riviera, and they play TPC, Phoenix in front of 300,000 people. I want ’em to go for free. Then go on CNN, and every TV show, and say why they’re going is because it’s that good.“
Of course, he knows that’s unlikely to happen. But that’s precisely his point.
“What does that tell me? It tells me it’s all about money, which is fine,” Couples said. “But don’t sit there and go on and tell me they’re ‘changing the game.’ What are they changing?”
Change is a confounded point in golf at this moment. LIV has without a doubt brought gigantic measures of disturbance into the expert scene, yet until now, the Saudi-supported association has done definitely more to partition golf than push it forward. Players have gotten compensated and the PGA Visit model has improved, however those changes have come at the expense of a swelling advertising fight that has filled in as a public shame to everything except a couple of the game’s greatest partners.
Indeed, even today, proof of LIV’s endeavors to “develop” golf stays meager, with scantily went to competitions and inadequately watched broadcasts neglecting to create an undeniable case for the secret golf crowd the association has professed to mine. LIV’s endeavors have had the additional impact of hosing the PGA Visit’s item and restricting the quantity of weeks in which golf fans can see the best players go up against each other.
According to this, Couples, isn’t change or development in any significant way.
“All things considered, for quite some time, golf has been transformed,” he said. “Arnold Palmer transformed it. Jack Nicklaus transformed it. Tiger Woods transformed it.”
“The LIV Visit ain’t modifying anything.”
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