Jon Rahm arrives at the PGA Championship at Aronimink in May 2026 chasing his third major championship win, but the larger question around him is no longer just about golf. The 29-year-old who stunned the sport when he left the PGA Tour for LIV Golf in December 2023 is now playing under a cloud of uncertainty that reaches beyond one tournament.
Last week at a LIV press conference in Virginia, Rahm said he still believes in the league and hopes new investors will step in. He said he has several years left on his contract and does not see any way out of it. When asked at the PGA Championship what he has learned since joining LIV, he replied, “That is for me to know.”
That answer landed because Rahm’s move carried a weight few defections in golf have matched. He was the first PGA Tour player to bolt for LIV after the June 2023 framework agreement was announced, and he did it eight months after winning the Masters, after 52 weeks at No. 1 in the world rankings, and with a reported $300 million contract in hand. In December 2023, he said he had not really thought about the long-term effects of the decision, a line that now sits uneasily beside the state of the league he joined.
The backdrop has changed sharply. The Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, which poured billions of dollars into LIV Golf, is walking away from the circuit, according to the article. LIV once boasted seven of golf’s prior 14 major winners, but its competitive punch has faded, and the league is 1-of-8 over the last two years heading into PGA Championship week. Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed are also returning to the PGA Tour, further shrinking the breakaway tour’s aura of inevitability.
Rahm’s public stance has shifted little even as the ground beneath him moves. He still speaks like a player committed to LIV’s future, yet he also acknowledges that CEO Scott O’Neill has “a lot of hard work to do.” That is the tension now: a golfer still good enough to contend for majors, tied to a league whose financial backer is backing away and whose competitive edge has dulled.
For Rahm, the next few days at Aronimink are about the same thing they always are in majors — score, pace, pressure, finish. But his answer now has a broader echo. The man who once helped define LIV’s arrival is being asked to explain what it all means at the moment the project that made him richer and more controversial looks less certain than ever.
