Golf Rumors: LIV set to sign Masters Champion in stunning deal

Is LIV Golf set to add another major winner to its growing roster of talent?

LIV Golf has already lured some of the world’s biggest stars to its upstart tour and it may have just landed its biggest fish yet.

Rumors have been circulating around Masters champion Jon Rahm’s imminent departure to LIV for several weeks now. Both Tiger Woods and Jordan Spieth were even asked about the World No. 3’s apparent interest in the PGA Tour’s rival during their media sessions at last week’s Hero World Challenge.

Now it appears those rumors are set to become a reality with the Telegraph reporting that one of the sport’s biggest stars is set to accept a mammoth offer from the tour funded by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund.

According to the reports that emerged on Tuesday, Jon Rahm is set to ink a deal worth a whopping 550 million dollars. To put that in perspective, in 2022 Cam Smith joined LIV for a reported figure of around 100 million dollars.

Rahm’s apparent departure to the LIV Golf Tour follows Rory McIlroy’s announcement last month that he was to step down from the PGA Tour Policy Board.

LIV Golf Rumors: Jon Rahm set to join rival golf tour in stunning deal.

There is no way to sugarcoat it for Jay Monahan and the PGA Tour, losing a player of Jon Rahm’s caliber would be another massive blow for the PGA and fans of golf in general as the sport continues to fracture in half.

The Spaniard would be set to join a handful of past major winners who have taken the LIV paycheck in recent times including, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith, and this year’s PGA Champion, Brooks Koepka, to name a few.

Jon Rahm is coming off of an exceptional year of golf which further cemented his status as one of the games’ very best players. The 29-year-old won four times in 2023 including an astonishing stretch to begin the year that included wins in back-to-back starts at the Sentry Tournament of Champions in Hawaii and The American Express in California.

He would go on to add a third win at Tiger’s event, the Genesis Invitational at the iconic Riviera Country Club in February before punctuating an unbelievable year with his second career major at Augusta in April.

Rahm finished Top 10 in three of the year’s four Majors with the only blemish on his sparkling resume coming at the PGA Championship in May where he finished in a tie for 50th. In all, the 2023 Masters winner accumulated ten Top 10 finishes on the PGA Tour this year and was recently announced as one of the finalists for PGA Tour Player of the Year honors. 

While the PGA Tour still has numerous stars on its roster of talent including exciting young players like Viktor Hovland and Ludvig Aberg, even Rahm’s harshest critics would admit that losing him to the LIV Tour is a massive loss.

If nothing else, this is sad for the fans who love the sport and continue to see the game’s best players competing against the best less and less. And that is something we can all agree on.