It is still one week before Brooks Koepka pegs it up at the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, completing his prodigal son golf journey, and it comes with the almost universal agreement that the PGA Tour got it right, through and through.
The fact that there was no outrage, no social-media firestorm, no beating of 7-irons into swords speaks to both the touch ’em all brilliance of the opportunity to return offered to Koepka and his three unwilling LIV Golf compatriots – Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and Cam Smith – but also to the public’s fatigue of the fight.
The PGA Tour not only survived the LIV threat, it is thriving as it races into a reimagined future, bolstered by private equity and CEO Brian Rolapp’s careful urgency. LIV, meanwhile, has lost one of its cornerstone players, is rebranding teams and still chasing relevance in this country while playing the bulk of its events outside the U.S.
While there is some lingering and understandable animosity toward the players who left for LIV – Wyndham Clark touched on it when he said he was “torn” by the tour’s decision regarding Koepka while Michael Kim posted that not every player liked the decision but the tour did what was in its best interest – it feels as if we’ve moved on.
Rahm and DeChambeau may be making tens of millions of dollars at LIV but, except for the major championships, their accomplishments seem largely irrelevant. They may still feel the competitive heat on weekends in contention but it’s hard to imagine them spending their golden years reflecting on a team victory in Singapore.
Unless one of them makes an about-face, Rahm, DeChambeau and Smith have effectively recommitted to LIV Golf by passing on the tour’s offer.
In Smith’s case, it’s no surprise given his expressed contentment with his new life despite just one top-five finish on LIV last year.
Rahm and DeChambeau are the whales and the question lingers as to whether they passed on the PGA Tour’s potentially one-time offer because they wanted to stay where they are or because there were too many entanglements to leaving LIV.
DeChambeau, whose star has grown since joining LIV because of both his 2024 U.S. Open victory and his aggressively cultivated YouTube platform, has said he has one year left on his contract and, by staying, has given himself leverage in brokering a new deal with LIV. The league understands losing him would be a crushing blow and one of the questions is whether the PGA Tour would give DeChambeau the creative freedom he now has.
Clearing a path for Koepka’s return was a masterstroke for Rolapp and the new PGA Tour model. It is evidence of what looks and feels like an entirely new era, one in which what happened before is respected but does not necessarily guide what comes next.
Rolapp is a master negotiator when it comes to media deals and getting DeChambeau back would have enormous implications.
Whether real or imagined, there has always been a sense of regret attached to Rahm, who vowed his allegiance to the PGA Tour only to be swayed by the kind of money few ever see. Is staying at LIV a point of pride now? Is the penalty too expensive to jump back this year?
If Rahm believed his jump to LIV in December 2023 was the move that would force a shared solution to golf’s great divide, it didn’t happen. Had he chosen to rejoin the PGA Tour now, Rahm might have pushed LIV closer to the recognition that it should negotiate the terms of its own surrender to be a smaller part of something bigger.
As Rory McIlroy noted last week, spending millions to keep DeChambeau next year doesn’t advance the LIV experiment. It merely keeps it where it is and, having seen Koepka leave, why would a top player be tempted to join LIV now, no matter how many millions are offered, if they are truly playing for more than money?
At the Tour Championship in August, Rolapp said he was given a clean sheet of paper when he accepted the job, allowing him the latitude to point the tour in an altered direction.
Commissioner Jay Monahan’s sheet of paper was necessarily filled with rewrites, scratched-out sections and notes in the margin because of how LIV crashed the party, forcing the tour to scramble to survive. It did so but not without some dents, scars and sleepless nights along the way.
Rolapp, by all accounts, is a big-picture guy with a gift for managing the details. Koepka, meanwhile, is a case study in the LIV experience, demonstrating that money doesn’t always buy happiness.
It is, indeed, a new day at the PGA Tour and by offering Koepka a path back, it’s a nod to the recent past. The best of both worlds.
Top: Brooks Koepka, who will return to PGA Tour competition at next week’s Farmers Insurance Open.
KEVIN C. COX, GETTY IMAGES