Jon Rahm knows the consequences hi🦹s decision might have.
Participating in the Ryder Cup might not be an option for the two-time major champion, who confirmed his defection from the PGA Tour♊ to ♏LIV Golf on Thursday.
But that, he said, was worth the risk.
He’s changed his stance on the upstart league and its controversial Saudi-backed funding, but hop❀efully, Rahm added, he’ll continue to play his desired Tour events — where he has compiled 11 wins — into the future.
Th𝓡ere could be backlash, but Rahm said he will “learn to deal with it.”
“The innovation, the difference, being part of a team, being an owner and a captain — when I grew up playing golf it wasn’t an opportunity,” Rahm told reporters on a conference call, when asked why the defection to LIV Golf was worth the Ryder Cup r🐲isk. “But it is now, and it’s really enticing to me. I’ve seen people grow and I’m looking f🧸orward to hoping making an impact”
When Rahm held that conference call Thursday b🌞efore appearing on Fox News — donning a black LIV Golf jacket and revealing that some of the rumors surrounding his pivot, in fact, were true — it became evident that Rahm♌ also considered the deal too promising to refuse.
His reported multi-year agreement could pay him as much as $600 million, with ESPN reporting it’s worth more than $300 million, and it also occurred at a pivotal juncture of the PGA Tour-LIV Golf negotiations with their Dec. 31 deadline nearing.
“This decision was for many reasons what I thought was best for me,” Rahm told reporters on a conference call, though he declined to disclose the financial framework of his agreement. “Don’t get me wrong. It’s a gꦦreat deal. I had a really great offer in front of me and that’s why I took it. They put me in a position where I had to think about it and I did.”
Rahm’s rise to No. 1 in the PGA Tour — and No. 3 currently — turned him into one of the sport’s most coveted members, and he said his exit from the Tour pieced together “a lot quicker thܫan some people maybe ex𒅌pected.”
He didn’t talk with Phil Mickelson, even though Mickelson was reportedly telling others that Rahm’s exit was a “done deal.”
He tried to keep the information from leaking out, even though it happened any𝄹way.
The appeal of playing in a team-based approach — similar to his time on the Spanish national team and at Arizona State — turned into one 💫of the “main motivating factors” too🎃, he said.
“Nobody’s forcing us to do this,” Rahm said on the Fox News interview. “This is our own choice. And if the product wasn’t good, I don’t think people would be making this jump. I certainly wouldn’t be doing it, because, again, I have had a great platform on the PGA Tour, and I’m forever grateful for the platform they have given me.”
Rahm also didn’t have any updates — or didn’t know any information — about the ongoing negotiations between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, as well as their looming deadline to finalize the merger in just over three weeks.
“I wis💜h I knew more about where the framework stands,” Rahm told reporters. “I’ve kept myself absent from all that to be able to play the best golf I can play. I found it to be a little distracting at times so I haven’t really focused on it. There’s been some leaps and some growth toward the game of golf getting together and I sure hope in the future we can make decisions that make golf better.”