The majors are better when Jon Rahm is in the hunt
Scottie and Rory. Rory and Scottie. Coming into last week’s PGA Championship, those two were the focus of the golf world’s conversation, the solution to the PGA’s identity crisis, the boss battle that golf fans craved.
Then Jon Rahm quietly stepped up and reminded us that a third player belongs on that level, too. And suddenly, the next two majors just got even more interesting.
While Scheffler couldn’t remember how to putt and McIlroy couldn’t find a fairway at Aronimink, Rahm quietly stepped up and powered his way right to the top of the leaderboard. He even held a share of the lead early on Sunday, and finished at -6, T2 and three strokes off the winning score.
Put another way: Had Aaron Rai not shot the round of his life, we’d be talking about this year’s career grand slam possibilities for three-time major winner Jon Rahm right now.
“I played really good golf. That's the only way to look at it,” Rahm said after his round. “As far as I'm concerned, to be in the mix again and hit it as good as I did and perform as well as I did this weekend, it's been a great week.”
It was indeed a great week after two-plus not-so-great years for Rahm … relatively speaking, of course.
Rahm’s story remains one of the most fascinating arcs in golf. Just months after declaring his “fealty” to the PGA Tour in 2023, he decided he had a price, and leaped to LIV Golf later that year for a signing bonus reputed to be somewhere around $300 million. The details and the zeroes don’t matter; the fact that Rahm ejected on the PGA Tour, and sounded regretful while doing so, is the key point here.
Whether Rahm made the right decision or the worst move of his career is, at this point, irrelevant; we’ll let the LIV stans and haters fight over that particular bone out in the backyards of X. What’s indisputable is that he did not, in fact, unify the two tours. Indeed, he might have perpetuated the hostility by undercutting the spirit of the now-laughable “framework agreement” the Tour and the Saudi PIF, LIV’s backer, struck in June 2023.
Rahm also effectively dropped out of the public eye by removing himself from notable events like The Players and the Tour Championship, instead playing LIV events with a fraction of the American viewership of PGA Tour events.
Play 2026 Soccer Pick 'Em with FOX One and make your picks for the world's biggest soccer tournament
Reunions at the majors and the Olympics reminded everyone of just how good it was to have Rahm in the mix, and the Ryder Cup again served as a sign of just how good he could be at his best. Sure, he hadn’t come anywhere close to winning a major since jumping to LIV, but that was bound to break his way at some point, right?
Then came Thursday, April 9, 2026. The first day of the Masters. On a day where the leaders, including McIlroy, posted 5-under rounds, Rahm stumbled and struggled to a +6 round that included a double-bogey on the 13th. His green jacket from 2023 was still hanging in the Augusta National locker room, but it seemed so much farther away than that.
“When you have no feel with the swing whatsoever,” Rahm said, “it's just not an easy [course].”
Rahm eventually rebounded to finish at +1, T38 for the week, but all that did was shine a harsh light on his LIV schedule. In seven events so far this year, he’s won twice, finished solo second three times and never finished outside the top eight. The question of why he can absolutely lap the field at LIV events and struggle at majors is not one that LIV advocates will want to consider too deeply.
Perhaps the impending metamorphosis of LIV, whatever it may be, brought some clarity for Rahm. He’s made it clear — and LIV CEO Scott O’Neil has affirmed — that he’s under contract and he’s not going anywhere for several years, as long as LIV exists. Although he hasn’t always sounded thrilled at the prospect, he’s also accepted it as his reality.
“We want to be here. It's been a lot of fun. I want to keep competing. I want to keep sharing some time with them,” Rahm said of his LIV compatriots and prospects. “But only time will tell.”
Rahm also seems more at ease, both on the golf course and behind the mic. He kept his volcanic temper mostly in check — yes, there was one incident at Aronimink where he accidentally hit a volunteer with a chunk of turf after a swing of frustration, but he clearly felt terrible about it — and he even did a little playful verbal jousting with the media in a way he hadn’t done in years.
Maybe all that is contributing to a better performance, maybe not. But the scoreboard doesn’t lie; Rahm is right back there in the mix.
“Just happy that all those things I felt like I could have done better at Augusta ended up working out this week,” he said Sunday evening.
Before the U.S. Open in mid-June, Rahm has LIV dates in South Korea and Spain. Then Shinnecock, where he’ll be one of the favorites, and deservedly so. He missed the cut the last time the U.S. Open was at Shinnecock in 2018, but then won the whole thing three years later.
Could Rahm bring home that third major, and his first since joining LIV? That’ll be a topic for deep discussion next month. For now, it’s enough that he’s back scoring at majors like he does at LIV ones. Scheffler and McIlroy may not be thrilled about that, but the rest of golf ought to be.
