‘A trophy is a trophy’: Jon Rahm on LIV, Augusta and Seve Ballesteros

Jon Rahm roars with laughter. “I gotta be careful here. I don’t want to create a headline.” Of the unwanted sort, he means. Rahm has featured on billboards for years. The question should be simple enough. Who, in his mind, is currently the best male golfer in the world? Yet Rahm, the reigning Masters champion, is aware it opens the gargantuan can of worms created by the departure of him and others to LIV Golf. The rebel circuit’s failure to gain official world golf ranking recognition adds a layer of complexity that Rahm has been vociferous about in the past. This time, he composes himself and gives a perfectly sensible answer.

“Let me say it this way; I think I can compete with anybody at any given time,” says Rahm. “I am going to leave it at that. I think at my best I can take on anybody. But that’s what everybody should be thinking. I think Rory [McIlroy] would tell you the same thing, or Dustin [Johnson], or Scottie [Scheffler].”

McIlroy will arrive in Augusta on Tuesday hoping to win the one major that has so painfully eluded him. Johnson, another LIV convert, does not convey the impression he is particularly bothered about jousting against the best any more. Scheffler is the hottest player in the men’s sport and a legitimate short-priced favourite to don the Green Jacket.

Rahm’s story, though, is the most intriguing. He has gone from critic of LIV’s format to its pin-up boy. Any assertion that the Saudi Arabian-backed tour is a knackers yard for washed up golfers is contradicted by Rahm, arguably the most combative animal in golf. He insists he will place any LIV reward alongside silverware from earlier in his career. “Hell yeah!” he says. “A trophy is a trophy. You could make an argument that I have some PGA Tour trophies that aren’t worth the most but they are still so valuable to me. The Spanish Open is extremely valuable to me. It’s not at the level of winning the Memorial or [the US Open] at Torrey Pines but a win is a win.” He looks insulted by any notion to the contrary.

Nobody could say Rahm won the Masters of 2023 the easy way. He produced a double bogey on the first hole of the tournament. In the 29-year-old’s mind, standing level par on the 7th fairway is always a strong position; he recovered to that precise point. Rahm was four shots adrift of Brooks Koepka when play was halted for a Saturday weather delay. Rahm was to prevail on Sunday evening by the same margin.

The intervening spell has seen him fall out of love with the PGA Tour to the point where an LIV switch became inevitable. Rahm concedes there is an element of point proving attached to his Masters return. “Yes and no,” he says. “I think all of us know where we stand. We all know where we are in this game. Competition doesn’t change and my mindset doesn’t change, I am still going out to win. I don’t feel there is a point to prove in that sense. But hopefully that mindset itself is a point I can put across.

“There is anticipation. You are just looking forward to it. Going back as a champion is different, it’s a special week. But the main goal is trying to remember you are there to hopefully win it again. I am going to enjoy every single bit of the benefits of being a champion but without losing sight of what I am trying to do.”

Rahm at least appears perfectly comfortable in his new environment. It is easy to cite money – hundreds of millions of dollars in this case – as the prime motivation for his December move. It must, however, be remembered that golfers of Rahm’s standing were on their way to becoming billionaires anyway. There is understandable disquiet about the guaranteed riches LIV offer but Rahm hardly seems the type to tone down professional instinct.

“It’s different, right?” he says of the LIV backdrop. “People will all tell you different things based on their own experience. I heard lots about the music being louder than you think, that the warm-ups [where teammates hit shots alongside each other] are different, that kind of stuff. If you have played enough junior golf or college golf, you are used to these things. In college we would have five guys warming up in the one spot, taking turns to hit shots. I play with music at home and in competition mode I don’t hear it anyway.

“Once the gun goes off, once you tee off, honestly there is zero difference whatsoever in my mind. Sometimes, I have honestly forgotten it is a 54-hole competition. You are playing against some of the best players in the world. The competition is there and you have to go out and shoot low.”

But does Rahm care about perception? That he took bags of cash and ran? “Well, I am a human being so to an extent you care what people think about you but not in this case,” he says. “I understand if somebody disagrees with me but it doesn’t really have an effect on me.

“I think it was different circumstances to a lot of other players moving. For the most part, I haven’t heard a lot of negative stuff from other players. There are always going to be people who don’t like it, who don’t approve but overall it hasn’t been much of an issue.” By “different circumstances”, Rahm means LIV’s early recruits took more flak. He regards golf as closer to global unification now than has been the case at any point during a messy two years.

Many have pondered what Spain’s late golf icon, Seve Ballesteros, would have made of Rahm’s move. Rahm suggests – without being certain – that Ballesteros might have been a supporter of Greg Norman’s breakaway tour plan in the 1990’s. Decades on, with the help of the Public Investment Fund, Norman realised his dream. “I didn’t know him so I don’t know [what he would think] but he was a competitor, a dog,” says Rahm of Ballesteros. “I don’t think he would have disagreed or disapproved of me. He would want me to keep being myself.

“I am still playing in majors. I have always wanted to etch my name in the history books in Spain and have been fortunate enough to do that. But there are also many ways to do this. I think we have an opportunity to create something special here. If I have the next 20 years on my career here as good as it already was on that PGA Tour, that will be something to show.”

This is striking. Rahm, who has been immersed in shaping his LIV team from logo design to apparel choices, views himself as positively redefining golf. “I like to think of it that way,” Rahm adds. “We can be seen as leaders or pioneers. Hopefully, right? This is an opportunity. That’s the way I choose to look at it. It is about how you choose to use that opportunity.”

Amusingly, Rahm cannot name the golfers with whom he now shares an Augusta locker. He knows only it is the champion from 1968 – Bob Goalby – and someone from the 1940s. Rahm returned to the home of the Masters in recent weeks to play a round with one of his college teammates but essentially to get the emotion of being back at Augusta out of the way. “You are in that champion’s locker room, you are excited that you are part of the history of that golf cub forever,” he says. “Your name is on that locker for ever. It is a special feeling.”

Rahm’s Ryder Cup situation is complicated by his playing domain. Essentially, the European side has to find a way for Rahm to be eligible for the defence of the trophy next September. He is keen to feature on the DP World Tour going forward – especially when it visits Spain – but for now is subject to sanctions. “What do I think? I think I will be there,” he says of the Ryder Cup. “I want to be at Bethpage and I think I’ll be at Bethpage. Hopefully I can qualify so they do not have to pick me.” Over to you, Luke Donald.

If Rahm successfully defends the Masters – and if not the case already – it would seem impossible that he would not form part of Donald’s team. Rahm would command a fresh level of status and reputation of a two-time Masters winner. “It puts you in a different class,” he acknowledges. “If I were to do it, I would focus more on being the first player born in Spain since Seve to get to three majors. Not many Europeans have got to three majors. I would think more about that than having two Green Jackets.” LIV or no LIV, Rahm exudes a confidence which suggests he will be prominent at Augusta once again.