Jon Rahm returns to his homeland for this week’s Spanish Open no doubt feeling better about his place in the professional game, even if he is still a bit woozy physically.
Citing “severe flu symptoms,” Rahm withdrew over the weekend from the LIV Golf Team Championship in Dallas, Texas. The 29-year-old Spaniard, who won the rival tour’s individual title and $22 million one week earlier, remained on the entry list for his national open on the DP World Tour while awaiting a decision on his recent appeal of fines relating to his LIV Golf defection.
Rahm was one of the Saudi-funded tour’s biggest signees when he jumped late last year for a sum reported at more than $300 million. That move came shortly after he played a key role in helping Europe beat the Americans and regain the Ryder Cup in Rome, Italy.
Last week, Rahm and LIV’s other Ryder Cup stars – notably Europe’s Tyrrell Hatton and Americans Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka – were ruled eligible for next year’s matches at Bethpage Black in New York when the PGA of America reaffirmed their membership despite their outlaw status with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour.
“To ensure the PGA Championship will continue to deliver the strongest field in golf and that the U.S. Ryder Cup team will continue to have access to the best American players, the PGA of America board has determined that LIV Golf players will be eligible for both,” the PGA of America said in a statement. READ MORE
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Brian Huggett, a Welshman and prominent figure in European golf in the 1960s-’80s who won twice in the early days of the European Tour, died early Sunday, according to his family. He was 87. Huggett won the tour’s Order of Merit in 1968 and played for Great Britain and Ireland in six Ryder Cups, then captained the 1977 squad. READ MORE
England’s John Parry earned an immediate promotion to the DP World Tour with his victory Sunday in the Challenge Tour’s Italian Challenge Open. It was his third title of the season on the developmental tour. Parry, 37, will be eligible for the rest of the DP World Tour season and exempt for all of 2025. He won the 2010 Vivendi Cup on what was then known as the European Tour. READ MORE
TV ratings for the recent Solheim Cup trounced viewership numbers for the PGA Tour and LIV Golf while up against the behemoth NFL.
According to Josh Carpenter of Sports Business Journal, the Solheim Cup averaged 657,000 viewers on NBC who watched the Americans wrap up a team victory in the singles matches on Sunday, September 15. That total compared with an average 69,000 who saw Patton Kizzire win in the final round of the PGA Tour’s Procore Championship on Golf Channel and 89,000 who watched Jon Rahm claim the LIV Golf season title on the CW Network.
Meanwhile, Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee poked LIV Golf for its skimpy ratings, declaring on social media: “Despite billions of dollars for golf megastars, LIV remains in the witness protection program of sports viewership.”
The news extends a season-long slide in TV ratings for men’s professional golf, according to an analysis by Golf Magazine’s James Colgan. READ MORE
Mark O’Meara returned last week to what he called “a magical place,” the site where he established himself as one of the game’s top champions. O’Meara, 67, announced his retirement as a touring pro ahead of the PGA Tour Champions’ Pure Insurance Championship at Pebble Beach (California) Golf Links.
O’Meara, whose two major championships in 1998 led to his eventual inauguration in the World Golf Hall of Fame, won the 1979 California State Amateur at the famed seaside course, where he would go on to win the PGA Tour’s Pebble Beach National Pro-Am a record five times as a professional.
“When you come through the gates at Pebble Beach, and drive down 17 Mile Drive, it has such an incredible aura,” said the 67-year-old O’Meara, whose 16 PGA Tour titles include the Masters and Open Championship in 1998, plus victories on the European (three), Japan (two), Australian (one) and Champions (three) tours. “Even if you weren’t a golfer, if you were just a sightseer, Carmel, Pebble Beach, Monterey Peninsula, the courses there, just the atmosphere and scenery ... to be fair, I have yet to find a place anywhere in the world prettier than Monterey Peninsula. It’s just a magical place.” READ MORE
CBS Sports will expand its weekend broadcast of the 2025 Masters by five hours, to 14 total, the network and host Augusta National Golf Club announced. The broadcast will air from noon to 2 p.m. EDT on Saturday and Sunday, April 12-13, on the network’s Paramount+ streaming service and 2-7 p.m. on CBS, with commercial breaks unchanged at four minutes per hour. The Masters also added Bank of America as a champion partner, joining AT&T, IBM and Mercedes-Benz. READ MORE
David Lipsky, who finished runner-up at the recent Procore Championship, has secured an exemption for the 2025 PGA Tour season, the tour announced. READ MORE
Frankie Capan III has clinched a promotion from the Korn Ferry Tour to the PGA Tour for 2025, the developmental tour announced. Also, Paul Peterson, the recent Simmons Bank Open winner, joined Thomas Rosenmueller and Isaiah Salinda in securing PGA Tour cards by being among the top 30 in the season-long KFT standings. The four ranked Nos. 14-17, respectively, in the KFT entering the tour’s final two weeks.
With the completion of the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship on Sunday, the top 75 players on the Korn Ferry Tour’s points list became eligible for this week’s season-ending Korn Ferry Tour Championship at Victoria National Golf Club’s Pete Dye Course in Newburgh, Indiana. The top 30 in the season-long standings earn promotions to the PGA Tour for 2025. READ MORE
TAP-INS
Australia’s Jeffrey Guan, a promising 20-year-old rookie professional on the PGA of Australasia and Challenge tours, underwent surgery to save his vision after he had been hit in the head by a ball during a pro-am on Friday at a New South Wales Open regional qualifier, according to local media reports. One week earlier, Guan made his PGA Tour debut via sponsor exemption at the Procore Championship, at which he missed the cut. READ MORE
Registration for the random-selection process to buy tickets for the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black in Farmingdale, New York, is open, the PGA of America announced. Demand is expected to far outstrip supply once tickets go on sale in November. READ MORE
The LPGA hired Samantha Simmons as the women’s tour’s chief people and internal operations officer. READ MORE
Compiled by Steve Harmon