The earthquake that Jon Rahm’s signing for LIV, the revolutionary Saudi golf league, unleashed last December has its aftershocks nine months later. The Basque player is in a legal battle because he does not intend to pay the fines that the European circuit, the DP World Tour, imposes on all member players who participate in the new competition. Rahm has presented this Thursday, according to the Ten Golf website, an appeal to freeze these sanctions as a precautionary measure so that he can compete in the Spanish Open, at the Club de Campo Villa de Madrid from September 26 to 29. A judge in London must now decide on the legality or not of these punishments for enrolling in the Saudi League, a process that could take months and during which Rahm will be able to enlist in the European circuit events without breaking the bank. The European Tour fined golfers who competed in the inaugural LIV tournament in 2022 £100,000 (then around €117,000).
Rahm has signed up for the Acciona Open de España, the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship (3-6 October) and the Estrella Damm Andalucía Masters (17-20 October), the three tournaments he needs to participate in to complete, along with his participation in the last Olympic Games in Paris, the quota of four competitions in 2024 required to be in the 2025 Ryder Cup in New York. Meanwhile, negotiations continue between the major circuits, with the PGA Tour at the head, and LIV in order to unify the calendars and bury the great war of world golf.
While waiting for peace, the battle is being fought even in the courts. “I have no intention of paying the fines. I am not a big fan of them and we are talking to the DP World Tour to see how we can do it to play those three tournaments,” Rahm explained on Wednesday before playing, starting this Friday in Chicago, the penultimate event of the Saudi League. “I am not going to play the Spanish Open for glory or anything like that. I am doing it because I think it is my duty and I also want to play in Sotogrande (Andalucía Masters). Not playing those tournaments would not only harm me, but also Spanish golf,” he added.
These days in Chicago, Rahm is looking to be crowned the individual winner of the Saudi League in his debut season. The Basque is leading the classification with 195.17 points, compared to 192.2 for the Chilean Joaquin Niemann, with whom he will play for the championship ring (as in the NBA). The Spaniard has qualified among the top 10 in each of the 11 tournaments he has played (he was absent in Houston due to injury) and won in Rocester on July 28, the week before the Games. In Paris he lost the gold, and any medal, after having a four-stroke lead with eight holes to go. He wants to make up for that setback with an individual victory in LIV. Then comes the Spanish Open, which he won in 2018, 2019 and 2022, in the midst of the legal war.
