Days after LIV Golf’s death, Jon Rahm’s Abu Dhabi win showed what comes next

Jon Rahm didn’t want to wait.

Standing on the 18th green at Yas Links on Sunday with a two-shot lead at the Abu Dhabi Championship, Rahm rolled his birdie putt to within an inch of the cup. It stopped a revolution short, but Rahm’s moment was in hand. He could’ve marked his ball and let his playing partners finish first, leaving him the stage. Instead, Rahm tapped in, took off his hat, which no longer bore the Legion XIII logo, exhaled, and looked to the sky, a weight seeming to melt off his shoulders.

The last time we’d seen Rahm tee it up, he finished dead last at the BMW PGA Championship. He was still wearing his LIV Golf team gear then. Still a man seemingly battling with the decision he made — one that was antithetical to who he’d shown himself to be — the impact it had on his game and the public blowback he admitted to seeing and battling. A man still trying to find a way to be the old Jon Rahm in a new reality.

But this week in Abu Dhabi was different because for the first time in four years, the golf world is moving in a different direction. It began like many weeks over the past four years, when players from the PGA Tour and LIV Golf coexisted, with massive questions about things not on the course. But while it started with Rahm discussing his exit from LIV Golf and Rory McIlroy discussing how LIV tried to kill the DP World Tour, it ended with something the pro golf world has long needed.

A look at what comes next.

As the Abu Dhabi Championship finished its first round on Thursday, LIV Golf’s lawyers were informing a bankruptcy court that the rebel league that once was an existential threat to the golf establishment had taken its final breaths. BC Partners Global was pulling its funding from LIV 2.0, and the league would be winding down operations.

LIV Golf’s demise brought mild reactions from Tyrrell Hatton and Rahm in Abu Dhabi. Their choices were already made, and with them, the writing on the wall. A league that was once backed by $6 billion from the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund now could only offer player equity, modest purses and scarce playing opportunities. That was clearly of little to no interest to most of the players still in the prime of their careers, and LIV Golf quickly sank once it filed for Chapter 11.

“No reaction really,” Rahm told reporters in Abu Dhabi. “I kind of had an idea what might happen. My decision was already made to get out of it and go on. I said my bit already on what I thought about LIV 2.0, and there’s not much more I can say. There’s no feelings of regret. I am  not the type of person to regret things. It doesn’t change anything.”

Ever since LIV Golf fractured the pro golf world in 2022, talk of unification and what golf’s future looked like surrounded every tournament where the players who speak for the sport were present. But this weekend in Abu Dhabi, as LIV Golf was given its last rites, the sport moved on with Rahm leading the way. The man who once pledged his “fealty” to the PGA Tour, only to don a LIV Golf letterman’s jacket and calcify golf’s civil war with a shocking U-turn, pulled the rip cord on LIV 2.0, took the team logos off his clothes and arrived in Abu Dhabi no longer carrying an anchor that seemed to weigh him down over the past two years.

Rounds of 65, 67, and 66 put Rahm in the lead heading into Sunday at Yas Links. The Abu Dhabi leaderboard offered a glimpse of what the DP World Tour’s future will likely look like in 2027. There was Rahm and Hatton, two LIV defectors who will likely play their golf on the European Tour in 2027 as they look to make their way back to the PGA Tour. There was Rory McIlroy and Adam Scott, two of the PGA Tour’s lead spokesmen during golf’s civil war. The DP World Tour expects 2027 to look a lot like this, with big names playing more frequently on their tour. The ex-LIVers will be trying to play their way back to the PGA Tour, while PGA Tour stars like McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood, and others will still ply their trade on their home circuit, leading to a bolstered DP World Tour.

It was a glimpse of that immediate future, yes. But this week in Abu Dhabi really was a clear sign that the game is finally moving forward, finally healing. That as LIV Golf’s wreckage sinks to golf’s sea floor, the questions that have hovered over the sport for four years will start to evaporate. Players who left will return to their respective tours in time; their transgressions will mostly be forgotten as the golf — not the battle for the sport’s soul — takes center stage again.

Back at the PGA Championship in May, after the PIF had pulled funding from LIV, Rahm was confronted with the choice he made to leave the PGA Tour. He said he didn’t regret his choice, but he had learned from it. He wouldn’t divulge the lesson his seismic move delivered, but he was adamant it was there and would help him push ahead in his quest to re-emerge at the top of the game. He almost won that week at Aronimink and left with that secret in his pocket.

Months later, with his LIV ties cut, Jon Rahm arrived in Abu Dhabi, seeming lighter. He and his wife had just welcomed their daughter into the world, and he said the “noise” he had dealt with had dissipated. Then Jon Rahm, who hadn’t won outside LIV Golf since his defection, went out and beat a world-class field that included McIlroy, Hatton, Fleetwood, and Eugenio Chacarra. As he did, everything looked different — or like how things used to be before talk of sovereign wealth funds, sportswashing and framework agreements took the wheel. There was just one of the world’s best golfers finally looking like himself again, with that lesson still only his to know.

“One can say that,” Rahm said when asked if this win was the start of a new chapter. “One can say that. After everything that’s gone on, and some poor play and some battles mentally, right, with a lot of noise, to come back out after a bit of rest and being with the family, it’s quite special.”

After his win, Rahm was asked about his mindset over the last eight weeks. He talked about the birth of his daughter and how his poor performance at Wentworth was because he didn’t want to miss it. But he also spoke about a feeling he had been searching for — one he said started to arrive in April and had been blocking out the “noise” he has been fighting through for the past few years.

“Let’s just say, it felt a little bit cloudy in a sense, and I can say the calmness I felt this week has been enjoyable all week, honestly. I felt incredibly calm, even when things didn’t go as planned,” Rahm said. “Not much seemed to bother me, and probably the main reason why I was able to perform the way I have.”

For two years, Rahm’s press conferences have been flooded with big-picture, existential questions about what his play says about the two tours and how he has grappled with his choice. But this week, after LIV’s obituary was written, there was very little of that.

There was Jon Rahm, a trophy, talk of iron shots and missed putts. There was discussion of a packed leaderboard filled with stars he once shared a tour with and will again in the future. There was Jon Rahm, finally a DP World Tour Rolex Series winner again, being the one to write the first words about what comes next for the world of pro golf — a world that’s no longer at war and is finally coming together.

“It’s on to the next page, right,” a victorious Rahm said of his post-LIV world. :Luckily in golf, I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of opportunities and take advantage of them, and hopefully I can keep doing so.”