AUGUSTA, Ga. — Jon Rahm, the 2023 Masters champion who joined LIV Golf eight months after he won his second career major championship, is not optimistic that his rival league will reach a deal to reunite with the PGA Tour in the near future.
“I think we all would like to see that,” Rahm said Tuesday during his pre-Masters press conference. “But as far as I can tell and you guys can tell, it’s not happening anytime soon.”
Last week, it was revealed that the PGA Tour recently rejected a $1.5 billion investment offer from LIV’s financial backers, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, according to reports from The Guardian and ESPN. A reported dealbreaker was that the PIF insists on LIV continuing to exist following any new pact, which the PGA Tour is not fond of.
“We don’t know,” said Rahm, who won LIV’s 2024 individual points race and its $18 million first-place prize. “No one knows. We all want a solution, and it’s hard to give one.”
Nothing to See Here
The Masters features the smallest contingent of LIV players yet at 12, down from 13 last year and 18 in 2023.
It’s the first time since the Open Championship in July that all the top PGA Tour and LIV golfers are playing in the same event, but Rahm doesn’t think that elevates this week in any way.
“I don’t think you need to do anything to make the Masters any more special than it already is,” he said. “Coming here, there’s no added anything to that. Majors have always been aside from every event in the world, and when you come to one of those, it doesn’t feel any different to what it was before.”
Ahead of the Masters, defending champion Scottie Scheffler blamed LIV for the ongoing divide in men’s professional golf. “If we want to figure out why the game of golf is not back together, go ask those guys,” Scheffler said.
And now just before the first major of the year teeing off, it appears no players on either side of the divide have clear answers as to what comes next.
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