Jon Rahm sealed his second consecutive LIV Golf individual title despite not winning in Indianapolis but the Spaniard has delivered some honest feedback for the course designers.
Indianapolis was the host for the event used to crown LIV’s latest champion, as the relatively new Chatham Hills site.
The course itself is designed by the legendary Pete Dye but with some alterations made for the LIV event and some tricky conditions in the build up, it wasn’t quite at its peak.
That saw some low scoring, including Sebastian Munoz’s impressive 59.
In the end, both Munoz and Rahm ended up finishing on -22 before Munoz beat out the Spaniard in a playoff.
And speaking after the event about the course, Rahm suggested there’s some improvements to be made.
Jon Rahm says why Chatham Hills can be improved after LIV Indianapolis
LIV Golf are doing their best trying to bring the game to different areas of America and the world and at times, some of the courses they use might not be quite up to it.
This week was a bit of an example of that as the field effectively destroyed the course at times.
Indeed, for eventual league title winner Jon Rahm, there is some work to be done in Indianapolis for them to get things spot on.
“Well, it’s unfortunate they had harsh weather and they couldn’t get some of the new tee boxes set in properly for us to play them because it would change quite a bit. 17th would be a vastly different hole. 18 would be a very different hole. We wouldn’t have wedges in,” Rahm commented.
“On 5, there’s a new tee that would be a very long par-5, so it would also change the way it plays. There’s just a few holes that the length would make a massive factor.
“The only thing I would say that allowed us to shoot that low would be the combination of having really firm fairways and soft greens. With short irons in, you really have to expect all of us to shoot low, but if you add the soft greens and rolling good, it’s expected that somebody is going to go crazy low.
“If there’s a way to have some new tee boxes, add some length and then maybe make the fairways a little bit harder to hit because some of them are pretty generous, I think it would look awkward if they narrowed them because the bunkers would be so far away from the edge, but it might be a necessity just so it plays a little bit tougher because some of the fairways coming down the stretch, you’re not necessarily too worried about missing the fairway on 6 or on 4 or on 18. It can happen, but it won’t really happen very often. They’re pretty wide.
“But yeah, if they can maybe keep the fairways a little softer and a little narrower, the new tee boxes will make a big difference on the score.”
Jon Rahm’s LIV Golf win could cause a change of format
With Joaquin Niemann having to accept that Rahm beat him to the title despite his five wins, there’ll be some out there who believe the system is unfair.
On one hand, you have to praise Rahm’s consistency and he was rewarded for that by coming out on top.
The Spaniard only missed the top ten once, but never won.
However, Niemann won five times and was also consistent but ended up coming short, effectively giving him nothing to show for his brilliant season.
Quite what the option would be to ensure that Niemann was maybe more fairly rewarded, is open to debate.
But with five wins to Rahm’s zero, it does seem like something may be amiss in LIV Golf’s points system.
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