When Jon Rahm drives down Magnolia Lane this week heading towards the new Player Services Building and the recently built underground carpark, he will surely have a smile on his bearded face. He will look as if he is meeting an old friend which he is, in a way. He and this patch of verdant Georgia countryside fit one another as well as a cape fits a matador.
It will be Rahm’s 10th visit to Augusta National Golf Club and such is his record there that he could claim it to be a home from home. He won the Masters by four strokes in 2023, on what would have been the 66th birthday of his countryman and hero, the late Seve Ballesteros, thus becoming the first European to win both the U.S. Open and the Masters. Rahm has had four other top-10s in the event Bobby Jones, the co-founder, always called a “tournament” not a championship.
Rahm’s success is a reminder that this part of the Peach State is tantamount to being an outpost of Spain. Fewer than 20 of the near 1,500 competitors in the Masters have been Spanish yet four of those 20 have had the privilege of having a green jacket draped over their shoulders to mark their victories – Ballesteros (1980, 1983), José María Olazábal (1994, 1999), Sergio García (2017) and Rahm (2023).
Why?
“Spaniards are known for their skills around the greens, their creativity, their shot making,” Olazábal said. “That was very handy at Augusta when driving was less important than it is now. Now the course is fiercer, it demands an overall game. You have to be long and straight, with a great short game, be creative and a shot maker.
“That almost describes Jon Rahm,” Olazábal continued. “I have known him since he was 13 or 14. He was very strong for his age and had the whole package. He broke the mould of most Augusta champions. The shot that he, a right-hander, favours is a fade, hitting a high, soft shot into greens and off the tee. But the second, ninth, 10th, 13th, and 14th demand a draw. In 2023 he did it.”
Success came early to Rahm. He is a former world No. 1 amateur who, after turning pro in 2016, won the 2017 Rookie of the Year on the European Tour and was European Tour Golfer of the Year in 2019. In July 2020 he topped the world ranking, the second Spaniard to do so after Ballesteros. In 2021 he won the U.S. Open with a birdie, birdie finish at Torrey Pines.
In 2021 Rahm finished in the top 10 of all four [major championships]. In the eight that have been held since he joined LIV Golf Rahm’s best finish has been tied seventh at the 2024 Open and the 2025 U.S. Open.
Compelling, controversial and colourful as Rahm is, he is also a conundrum to many. He is the man with an unusually deep knowledge of the history of the game who, nevertheless, went to LIV Golf in December 2023 for an alleged $350 million. This was a move observers regarded as a Faustian deal, one in which he sacrificed his moral integrity by joining an organisation financed by an authoritarian regime and put himself into conflict with the DP World Tour and the PGA Tour. His move also disappointed many golf followers.
“I didn’t think he would go to LIV,” Olazábal said. “Before his move he was very pro the DP World Tour, the PGA Tour and the game’s history. I respect everyone who took the deal. If someone put a cheque of that figure in front of me, I would have found it very tempting.”
Some wonder whether Jon Rahm has lost his competitive edge.
YU CHUN CHRISTOPHER WONG, EURASIA SPORT IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGES
Furthermore, the move appeared to precede decline in Rahm’s form. Though he was LIV Golf’s individual champion in both 2024 and 2025, the yardstick by which golfers are judged are the major championships. In 2021 Rahm finished in the top 10 of all four. In the eight that have been held since he joined LIV Golf Rahm’s best finish has been tied seventh at the 2024 Open and the 2025 U.S. Open.
However unfair the question is, it remains uppermost in the minds of many: has Rahm’s competitive edge been dulled by the amount of money he has received?
Rahm’s second and more recent controversial move is to decline the olive branch offered by the DP World Tour to those who had joined LIV Golf and been fined heavily for playing in events that conflicted with DPWT events. The DPWT said, in effect: “We will drop the fines going forward so long as you commit to play six events on our tour each year.” The six events are the four of their choice that all DPWT members are required to play to maintain their membership and two selected by DPWT.
Eight LIV Golf competitors, including Tyrrell Hatton, the Ryder Cup player, agreed to this proposal and to pay their fines accrued to date. Rahm’s answer was “no,” which is Spanish for no.
The tipping point for Rahm was the requirement to play six tournaments, not four. With a flash of anger he accused the DPWT of “extorting players like myself … that have nothing to do with the politics of the game.” In South Africa recently Rahm said: “They offered us a deal that I don’t think was right. If they changed it for me to play a minimum of four events I would sign with them. Apparently me playing those two extra events is where they’re drawing the line and I’ve told them I am not willing to play them. I don’t think I am asking too much.”
Rahm has now upped the ante by withdrawing his appeal against the fines, which, while it was ongoing meant he could play in the Ryder Cup. He has said he will not pay the fines, thus rendering himself declining to rejoin the DPWT and ineligible for next year’s Ryder Cup. A Europe Ryder Cup team without Rahm is, in the eyes of many, only half a team.
The prevailing mood among Rahm’s European peers is that he should pay up. “This is a much softer deal than what Brooks [Koepka] took to come back and play on the PGA Tour,” Rory McIlroy said. “The European Tour can only do so much to accommodate these guys. There is a reason eight of the nine guys took this deal. I think it’s a really good deal.”
“You can’t have the best of both worlds – to take the money and have the same rights as on the PGA Tour and DP World Tour,” Olazábal said. “Making a decision has some obligations.”
In a nutshell [most golf followers] think Rahm should swallow his pride, pay up and shut up. There have been enough disagreements in golf recently.
At the Players, Justin Rose added: “… where [Rahm] may have a point is the tour making him play extra events. So maybe there is some middle ground where he would do his best to support the tour as and when, but not necessarily have that hung over his head. But paying his fines is obviously step No. 1.”
This is probably the view of most golf followers, too. In a nutshell they think Rahm should swallow his pride, pay up and shut up. There have been enough disagreements in golf recently.
If this standoff is not resolved it would not be the first time Europe had faced the United States in the Ryder Cup without a proud Spaniard. In 1981 Ballesteros, then an Open and Masters champion, was left off the Europe team because the demands for appearance money of $30,000 per tournament made for him by his manager Ed Barner were against tour rules and the wishes of tournament sponsors.
The best meeting place in golf is considered to be beneath the spreading branches of the old oak tree at the back of Augusta National’s clubhouse. Is it too much to hope that there this week Rahm and his people, Luke Donald, Europe’s captain for next year’s Ryder Cup, and Guy Kinnings, chief executive of the DPWT, will convene and begin the process of returning Rahm to where he belongs, starring on both the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour?
Top: Jon Rahm’s dispute with the DP World Tour has sparked much conversation.
