It goes without saying that it was a huge blow to the PGA Tour to lose Jon Rahm when the Spaniard decided to make the jump to LIV Golf in December 2023.
If there was a move which seemed to have the potential to swing the needle towards LIV Golf, it was possibly the signing of Jon Rahm. Rahm, at the time, was The Masters champion while he had been one of the best players in the world for some time when he decided to make the jump.
It was definitely a setback for the PGA Tour. As well as Rahm being an unbelievable talent, he also seemed to be an extremely popular player on both sides of the divide.
While Rahm initially expressed his commitment to the PGA Tour, he always stopped short of criticising any of those who joined LIV. So while it was a shocking piece of news when he did decide to move, plenty of people did not actually seem too surprised.
Jon Rahm names the two PGA Tour players he is closest to in the game
What was intriguing was to see who would follow Rahm. Plenty of players joined LIV with a number of the names they had been close with. And it would not be a shock if Tyrrell Hatton‘s move only came about because Rahm had decided to join.
Interestingly, it seems that the two players Rahm is closest to in golf remain connected with the PGA Tour.
“My oldest, closest friend as a pro is Wesley Bryan. We got paired together, he won three times on the Korn Ferry and upgraded to the PGA Tour right away, pass, if you win three times, you don’t have to wait until the end of the year. And I was on sponsor invites, I’d just gotten a tour card, we were both playing at the Wyndham Championship, and we were both playing terrible and it was very slow. On Friday, our playing partner WD because he had an injury so it was just the two of us waiting all day, and we had a lot of time to talk. And the only people watching were my girlfriend at the time, my wife, and his family, so we were just hanging out basically. And then from then we’ve always got along, played a lot of practice rounds together,” he told Andrew Santino.
“The other one would be Tony Finau. They’re both great people. Tony, you can’t say a single bad thing about Tony Finau. The guy is a 10 out of 10.
“I don’t think I’ve heard him say a bad thing about anyone.”
How Tony Finau appeared to deal LIV Golf a blow before the 2025 season
Of course, Bryan’s future on the PGA Tour appears to be up in the air after he was reprimanded for taking part in the Duels event on LIV ahead of their Miami tournament.
Meanwhile, Rahm’s comments on Finau are interesting. Finau is one of the players who seems to have been most heavily linked with joining LIV Golf without actually making the jump.
In fact, there were claims made ahead of the 2025 season that Finau had agreed to join LIV. Obviously, those proved to be wide of the mark.
It does appear that LIV’s days of signing marquee names may be over for the time-being. They signed no established stars ahead of 2025.
But if they do make a big push for big names again in the future, someone like Finau would surely be worth pursuing. He has the quality to win a major title and has a number of PGA Tour wins under his belt.
And, judging by Rahm’s comments, Finau would be a big loss to the tour if he decide to join LIV.
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