Jon Rahm’s LIV Golf Tour move and the lure of lavish Saudi incentives - Paul Lewis

Jon Rahm, the latest defector to the rebel LIV Golf Tour, now seems rather like the bloke who cuts down a kauri tree and then mounts the stump to give a speech about saving our natural heritage.

He’s the latest in a long line of top PGA golfers who’ve pocketed the Saudis’ huge cash incentives to join the pale imitation that is LIV, giving rise to a new golf ranking list: those who spouted wonderfully high horse opinions when LIV first appeared... but took the money anyway.

I’d rank Rahm at No 2 on this little list of weasel word-wielders. Last year, at the US Open, he told journalists why he wouldn’t go to LIV: “Money is great, but when [wife] Kelley and I... this first thing happened, we started talking about it, and we’re like, will our lifestyle change if I got US$400 million ($650m)? No, it will not change one bit. Truth be told, I could retire right now with what I’ve made and live a very happy life and not play golf again. So I’ve never really played the game of golf for monetary reasons. I play for the love of the game, and I want to play against the best in the world. I’ve always been interested in history and legacy, and right now the PGA Tour has that.”

Last week he accepted LIV’s offer, reportedly US$565m ($920m). Clearly, $920m offers more of a lifestyle change than a mere $650m. However, Rahm also told the media last year that he didn’t like LIV’s 54-hole, no-cut, teams format. So why jump ship from the PGA Tour? In his recent press conference, he used many phrases from the LIV media training manual: “best for my family”; “growing the game” and the team aspect is now “absolutely key”.

Yawn. So far, so typical, though he did address the money side of it: “Obviously the money is very very nice, I’m not going to give you the whole spiel,” Rahm said. “I don’t play golf for money but as a father, as a husband, as a family man, I do owe it to my family to set them up the best I can and luckily I have that possibility, so yeah. That was a big part of it.”

Yeah, imagine signing for a piddly $650m; you couldn’t possibly change your lifestyle or set your family up with that. Still, he’s not the only one and I’d even place English golfer Paul Casey ahead of Rahm. A few years back, Casey told a British newspaper: “Signing and being paid to be down there, I would be a hypocrite if I did that. Anyone who says sport isn’t political, that’s rubbish. I’m glad I took a stance, more so if it highlighted the issues within the region.” Guess where he’s now playing?

Brooks Koepka was another. Pre-LIV, he said: “Everyone talks about money. They [LIV] have got enough of it. I don’t see it backing down; they can just double up and they’ll figure it out. They’ll get their guys. Somebody will sell out and go to it.” Turned out to be him, though his fee was said to be worth US$100m - a bit less than Rahm wangled. Koepka’s rationale: “Opinions change, that was it.”

Dustin Johnson (US$125m to join LIV) explained his shift to the media: “I don’t want to play golf the rest of my life, which I felt like I was probably going to have to do.” Poor guy. Your heart pumps curdled custard for him, doesn’t it? Imagine being imprisoned on the PGA Tour and being, at that time, the third-highest career earner in golf with US$74m, behind only Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson (also a LIV defector). Hard to see a way out of that hell, isn’t it?

Apart from that US$74m from the PGA Tour, he’d trousered US$27m in FedEx Cup bonuses and, according to Sportico, another US$100m in career endorsements up to the point when he joined LIV.

So, we’re up to US$200m already - and there’ll be more. Arnold Palmer, for example, was still earning US$30m a year from off-course endorsement and royalties when he died in 2016, aged 87. Granted, top professional golfers live in a different world and deal with vastly different numbers from the rest of us - but in what universe would Dustin Johnson have been compelled to keep playing for the rest of his life?

No one I know begrudges pro golfers earning astronomical sums. We’d all do it if we could. But, please, with LIV’s obscene amounts, stop telling us about your family and growing the game. You’re growing something - a bank account, a PhD in rationalising, the hide of a rhino, a desire for even more money over the tour that made earning a lot of money possible in the first place.

Oh, and maybe the ability to look the other way when someone wants to discuss journalist Jamal Khashoggi being dismembered with a bone saw and when the Saudis executed 81 people in a single day.

Paul Lewis has been a journalist since the last ice age. Sport has been a lifetime pleasure and part of a professional career during which he has written four books, and covered Rugby World Cups, America’s Cups, Olympic & Commonwealth Games and more.