Jon Rahm knows what you think is to blame. He just doesn’t agree.
Rahm captured the Abu Dhabi Championship last week, his first win in a DP World Tour event since 2022, just days after LIV Golf announced it was winding down its operations. Optically the symmetry between the two did not seem like a coincidence, which Rahm seemingly acknowledged afterwards. “After everything that’s gone on,” Rahm said on Sunday, “and some poor play and some battles mentally with a lot of noise, to come back out after a bit of rest and being with the family, it’s quite special.”
Rahm already had announced his intentions to depart LIV earlier in October, with his lawyers stating in a New Jersey bankruptcy court that Rahm found the terms of LIV 2.0 “unacceptable.” It marked an end to a turbulent three-year stretch for Rahm, who went from the reigning Masters champion and arguably best player in the sport to someone whose game was suddenly in question. Rahm did win four times during his LIV tenure and captured the season-long individual title in all three of his years with the league, yet those accomplishments were overshadowed by his major performance in this span. Before joining LIV, Rahm had won the 2021 U.S. Open, 2023 Masters and posted 12 top-10 finishes in golf’s four biggest events. After signing with LIV, he rarely threatened on those stages, with a runner-up finish at this year’s PGA Championship at Aronimink and a T-8 at the 2025 PGA at Quail Hollow his lone serious runs at another major title.
RELATED: Jon Rahm’s LIV Golf gamble is over and nobody won
Aside from its entanglements as a sportswashing exercise, one of the main criticisms of LIV was its lack of competitive environment, a sentiment spurred by few formidable players and relatively easy setups. That many of LIV’s roster suffered competitive atrophy when joining LIV did not quiet these concerns, with Rahm being the embodiment of this analysis. However, speaking Tuesday ahead of the DP World Tour’s season finale, Rahm dismissed a reporter’s question if last week can be the start of a new “golden era” for himself.
“We’ve got to stop blaming LIV for me playing poorly at the majors. I know what you are all trying to insinuate. It’s not because of LIV. It’s my own,” Rahm asserted. “Because I did have a chance to win the PGA the last two years we played it, right. It’s my own doing and my own, let’s say, golf swing problems. That’s what I was alluding, that when you are not playing a big event, it’s a lot easier to manage certain things.
“Golf courses usually are easier, so you can manage them that way. So I hope that what I’m working on recently can be something that makes me more consistent on the biggest stages, yeah.”
RELATED: On the last days of LIV Golf
Earlier in his press availability, Rahm remarked he had played good golf this season. “Just that unfortunately some of my not-so-good weeks happen to be in the majors, right,” Rahm conceded. Besides the PGA where I had a decent chance of winning, the other three majors, I didn’t do a good enough job.” When asked if he could explain the disparity in performance Rahm said “I think it’s easier at regular events to maybe compensate for some things that we’re doing wrong technique-wise. And when the pressure is at its biggest and the stage is the largest is when those mistakes will be accentuated and that’s a little bit what happened.”
With the PGA Tour not expected to re-extend its Returning Member Program offer that Brooks Koepka received earlier this year (which Rahm rejected in February), Rahm is likely to play his 2027 schedule in Europe. His Abu Dhabi win jumped Rahm from outside the DP World Tour’s top 50 in its Race to Dubai standings to No. 6, giving him a shot at the season-long title this week.
RELATED: How Jon Rahm can still win the DP World Tour’s Race to Dubai title
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
