[Picture: Justin Casterline]
Jon Rahm, as intense a competitor as the Spaniard is, maintains a sublime sense of humour.
The two-time major winner, who captains the Legion XIII team on LIV Golf that includes Tyrrell Hatton, Caleb Suratt and Tom McKibbin, was locked in an unlikely battle with five-time winner this year, Joaquin Niemann, for the league’s season-long individual title during its Indianapolis finale that concluded Sunday (Monday AEST).
Rahm pipped Niemann at the post, despite Sebastian Munoz winning LIV Golf Indianapolis, while Henrik Stenson (49th on points), Andy Ogletree, Mito Pereira, Yubin Jang, Kim and Frederik Kjettrup (54th) were all relegated from the league. But we’ll get to that in a moment. We want you to know Rahm still found time to play a prank on his English teammate, Hatton, on the final day of LIV’s regular season.
Hatton, who won the DP World Tour’s Dubai Desert Classic this year and was T-4 at the US Open, had to back off his tee shot at the party hole at The Club at Chatham Hills, twice, because the nursery rhyme, “I’m a little tea pot” was played by a disc jockey. Rahm chose Hatton’s walk-up song.
“Me,” Rahm, the 2025 LIV Golf individual champion, said when asked who chose the rhyme. “We had a thing the whole week where the team picked each other’s song. And it was mainly just me and Tyrrell picking because Tom is happy with anything, and we love Caleb, but his knowledge outside of country music isn’t that vast. I don’t think any of those songs would accomplish what we wanted. Tyrrell didn’t like his the first day. The second day also wasn’t good enough. So we decided to have a little bit of fun with it, and the fact that [the party hole] was his last hole [because of LIV’s shotgun starts], it was perfect.”
A sense of humour is how Rahm, a former 11-time PGA Tour winner who claimed two LIV Golf titles last year, has been able to deal with the frustration of playing 13 LIV tournaments across seven months and nine countries without an individual victory.
Rahm, who only once finished outside the top 10 this year, was a measure of consistency on the 54-hole league without getting over the line. Combined with his scintillating stretch of four closing birdies in Indiana, it was enough to steal the season-long championship from Niemann.
AUSTRALIAN NEWS: Watch the moment a light plane crashes on a Sydney golf course
At LIV Golf Indianapolis, which saw more than 60,000 fans across three rounds for the league’s highest-ever attendance at a US event, former Masters and US Open champion Rahm lost in a playoff to Colombia’s Munoz.
Munoz, who plays on Niemann’s Torque GC team, opened the event with a 12-under-par 59 that included a double-bogey, before a 67 and a final round of 65 gave him a 22-under total. He forced overtime with Rahm, who closed with a 60 that was underlined by four consecutive birdies coming home. Dustin Johnson (67) was third at 20 under while Niemann (66) was T-4. Torque GC won the teams vertical over Rahm’s Legion XIII.
Confusingly, Niemann had won five LIV events this year, but finished second in the overall season-long standings. Rahm never led the points tally all season until it counted – on the very last day. He sealed the $US 18 million ($A26.6 million) overall bonus – and back-to-back season championships – with a 108-metre wedge to tap-in distance on the 54th hole, though he was unable to birdie the extra hole to extend the playoff with Munoz.
“Still slightly bittersweet,” Rahm said. “Like I know I’m supposed to be happy. It’s a great moment. But it just doesn’t feel great to finish the year losing two [different] playoffs. To be able to win the season without actually winning a tournament, I know eventually I’ll be proud of that. Right now it’s slightly more something I’m going to suffer over a little bit more, and it may never be replicated.
“And kudos to [Munoz] for finishing the way he did. That up-and-down on 17 was incredible and then playing 18 the way he needed to twice in a row is fantastic.”
So, how did a player with no wins take out the season gong over someone with five?
Put simply, because points are points.
Rahm finished with 226.16 points, Niemann with 223.68, while Bryson DeChambeau was third with 144.74. On LIV, only the top 24 finishers at tournaments earn points. Tournament winners receive 40 points, while second place claims 30 and third place is awarded 24. After that, a sliding scale distributes points down to 21st to 24th, who take one point each.
Rahm had four runner-up results and only finished outside the top 10 once in 13 events. Even then, that was a T-11 result.
“You need a lot of coincidences to go on exactly with the year Joaquin had,” Rahm said. “He’s won five times. He’s played incredible golf. One could argue he was probably the more deserving guy to win this. But we have the points system that we have, and somehow, I don’t know how, I managed to pull through and get it done.”
So, how will former world No.1 Rahm, make sense of all of this? Other than his love of a joke, a video game of all things will provide clarity.
“It makes me think of a Call of Duty term,” he said. “For anybody that understands competitive Call of Duty, we’re going to call it ‘scrap time.’
“It’s directly thinking about a moment like this, but it’s truly what I would say is my MO as a competitor. It’s 54 holes. Just because you had a rough first 36, it doesn’t mean it’s over. The same way somebody shoots 10-under on the first day, you can do it on Sunday as well.
“It’s always been in my DNA to fight as hard as one can until the end of the tournament: 32nd is better than 33rd. With that mentality, I’ve been able to have a lot of really good Sundays and put myself in a good position and keep adding points. Slow and steady in this case won the race, four second places and only time out of the top 10. Still really proud of myself when it comes to that.”
It was slow, and it was very steady. The accomplishment will likely take a while to soak in, given the rare circumstances in which he won the season-long championship ring. But Rahm will ultimately have the last laugh.
And from what we’ve seen, he’ll take it.
