Released, Jon Rahm is Jon Rahm again. Just in the same week in which LIV Golf officially certified its death by running out of funding, the Basque player has won again on the European circuit after four years and for the first time outside the golden cage of the Saudi League since the 2023 Masters. Rahm's triumph in the Abu Dhabi Aldar Championship, the penultimate event of the season at the DP World before the final the following week in Dubai, cannot be understood without the end of the revolutionary circuit that started golf in two by signing some of the big stars with a checkbook, including the Basque golfer. In December 2023, Rahm went from wearing Augusta's green jacket to a black leather jacket with which he posed when signing for LIV and causing an earthquake in his sport. Since then he has won the individual classification of the Saudi competition three times, as many times as there are courses in which he competed on the rebel side, but he had not won again far from the borders of that clearly less competitive environment.
Rahm confirmed for the first time, last Tuesday, that he was resigning from being part of LIV 2.0, the decaffeinated version of the League, with fewer tournaments and less money, that he was trying to stay alive. He did not succeed after the BC Partners fund withdrew its commitment to contribute $300 million to the new creature. On Thursday, LIV stopped breathing. And with that mystery cleared up and the contract that still bound him for two more seasons, Rahm has returned to flying and showing off that powerful and dominant game that he displayed in his time as a great figure on the American circuit. The Spaniard won in Abu Dhabi with -23 and laps of 65, 67, 66 and 67, two strokes ahead of Tyrrell Hatton (another former Liv) and four over Rory McIlroy. Ángel Ayora and David Puig were fifth with -16, and Ángel Hidalgo and Eugenio Chacarra, 22nd with -11.
From the worst tournament to returning to the top. Rahm had recorded the worst result of his professional career in his previous appointment, outside the cut and last with +11 in the BMW PGA Championship at the end of September in Wentworth. Then uncertainty about his professional future and nerves about the birth of his fourth child, his second daughter, Begoña, were going through his mind. With the baby already in his arms and LIV gone from the equation, Rahm has cleansed his spirit in a kind of sporting resurrection. In Abu Dhabi he needed to get rid of “the scab” and, with his head focused one hundred percent on the game, his hands have recovered the magic of yesteryear.
“This means a lot, I almost don't allow myself to believe it,” said Rahm; "It's been a while since I played well in a DP World Tour event. And in my last performance, if you don't count the retirements, I finished last, so last to first is a pretty good feeling. After everything that's happened and some bad play and some battles, mentally, with a lot of noise, to win again after a little bit of rest and have a new addition to the family is pretty special."
The lack of competition at his level in the Saudi League has shaved his performance in recent seasons, a decline reflected, for example, in the greats: he has not won a major since the 2023 Masters after previously winning the 2021 US Open. Now, after closing at the age of 31 (he turns 32 on Tuesday) that parenthesis in his career in which he filled his pockets but gave up on the record, Rahm aims to return to being the player who reached number one in the world and who competed for the world throne with Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy.
Victory functions as liberation and also as vindication. Without the LIV suit, Rahm can play the European circuit calendar in 2027, but he hopes that the PGA Tour will open its doors to him without serving the year of sanction since his last participation in the Saudi tour (August 23). The Basque assures that he would now accept the return conditions that the American circuit offered to Brooks Koepka last December (financial sanction and restricted playing rights from the start) and that Rahm himself rejected in January. The scenario has changed after the disappearance of LIV due to the withdrawal of the checkbook of the Saudi Sovereign Fund, PIF. And in that panorama, the Spaniard's victory in Abu Dhabi, his eleventh in the DP, his sixth Rolex Series and his first bingo on the European track since the DP World Tour Championship in November 2022, is his best letter of introduction to earn a pardon.
Eugenio Chacarra retains the lead in Race to Dubai, the annual classification of the European circuit, in the absence of the final tournament, with 4,243 points, ahead of McIlroy (3,709) and Patrick Reed (3,528), and with the challenge of becoming the third Spaniard after Seve and Rahm to win the Order of Merit crown, while Ayora, Nacho Elvira, Hidalgo and Puig are in the fight to get a card for the circuit American. Dubai promises strong emotions.
