Jon Rahm boosts the Saudi golf league

The agents of the Saudi Vision 2030 programme were right when last December they convinced Jon Rahm Rodríguez, with a stratospheric amount of millions of dollars, to join the LIV, the world golf league sponsored and sponsored by Saudi Arabia. 

Notable golf legends such as Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed, Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson and Sergio García had already joined the circuit, all of them winners of a good number of majors, the four major tournaments played on the planet each season, three of them in the United States and one in the United Kingdom. 

The signing of Rahm to promote a league that dared to challenge the quasi-monopoly of the American PGA caused a upheaval in world golf, which suddenly saw events appear on the calendar in cities that jumped to the forefront, given the astronomical figures that were at stake, both in individual and team rankings. 

Barely ten months later, the Spanish golfer has not only not disappointed, but has also entered his legend in the annals of the LIV, the young Saudi league, which has also innovated in terms of the rules governing the tournament, with notable differences with respect to the American and European circuits.

And Rahm's final triumph is all the more to be celebrated given that his season has been punctuated by disappointments and upsets. The anticipation chroniclers, i.e. those who do not enjoy the victory just achieved and already demand the anticipated achievement of the next, fueled doubts when the Basque golfer did not achieve his first victory until this summer at the JCB Golf & Country Club in Rocester (England), after failing to meet expectations in the previous Spanish event at Valderrama. 

Doubts turned to monumental disappointment when at the Paris Olympics Rahm, who was leading the tournament by four strokes with eight holes to go, slumped shockingly out of the medals, unable to explain himself the reasons for such a brutal slump. 

Now, the sceptics have received a spectacular demonstration of the character of this indomitable Spanish golfer, who, in spite of everything, had not dropped out of the top-ten in all the tournaments of the season, and who arrived at the last of the Bolingbrook singles in Chicago on the heels of the Chilean Joaquín Niemann. Even after the first of the last three rounds, you had to be either very optimistic or a Rahm fan to bet on his final victory. Well, two memorable last rounds took him to the lead with -11, three strokes behind Niemann, who was unlucky in his very aggressive attempts to close the gap. And, to complete the picture, Sergio García from Castellón climbed to third place in the tournament and in the league, narrowly beating one of the most solid and spectacular players in world golf, the Englishman Tyrrell Hatton. 

In monetary terms, the harvest is simply scandalous: 22 million dollars for Rahm (4 million for winning the Chicago tournament and 18 million for the individual championship of the LIV 2024). Chile's Niemann gets 8 million, while Sergio Garcia's third-place finish earns him a cheque for 4 million.

The impressive play of the top trio and so many others battling to maintain their status has multiplied television audiences, while setting the stage for a new season of the Saudi league, which next year will begin with tournaments in Riyadh, Adelaide, Hong Kong and Singapore, as many occasions in the past, Hong Kong and Singapore, another opportunity for the Saudi kingdom to continue to show the world the dizzying transformation of its society, as well as the huge investments it wants to undertake to diversify its sources of income as much as possible, and not depend exclusively on its still huge oil production. 

On the last weekend of September, fans will be able to enjoy the Spanish Open at the Club de Campo de Madrid, and just a fortnight later the Andalusian Masters at Sotogrande. Both courses will be attended by the newly crowned champion of the Saudi league. If Rahm wins in Madrid he will take home 250,000 euros, a large amount for Spain and Europe, but in the end ‘small change’ compared to what he pockets on the Saudi circuit. But this indomitable Basque has said he is doing it ‘because I know that my presence is good for Spanish golf and for Spain’. All hail to you, champion!