Ben Coley on Jon Rahm's victory in LIV Golf debut season

Of course he is. When LIV further ruptured the game of golf by signing Rahm late in 2023, they had a new best player. Rahm showed it not with his best, but by winning without it. He’ll win it again next year, too. And the year after that, unless he gets his way and is back playing substantive golf tournaments more regularly by then.

The trouble is, not enough people care. Some do – vigorously, whether because they really do welcome the disruptor which has made professional golf much worse, whether they’re paid to say they do, or more likely both. But not nearly enough.

Scan the world of golf news this morning and you might just see the footnote that is the conclusion of the LIV Golf season. It remains a flawed and fabricated sports league run by a nefarious nation state and putting a QR code on a ball marker does nothing to change that.

Perhaps going up alongside the Irish Open at Royal County Down and another gripping Solheim Cup was calculated. This way, LIV Golf and its troops can claim a form of success despite another relatively meagre crowd and YouTube viewing figures which would have many young people seeking out a new career.

Just like that of Rahm, there is success here, you just have to search around to find it. LIV does have some welcome innovation within its broadcast, and YouTube does also allow you to mute it. The drone shots are both pleasing on the eye and informative, which is something. And they do sometimes sell out, albeit partly because they choose to sell fewer tickets than they theoretically could.

But success is relative. In relative terms, Rahm has done just about what most people thought he would do and won the LIV Golf individual championship. He has so far failed to be relevant in the wider golfing world save for a few hours at the Olympics, and by extension has failed to be at all relevant to the sporting world at large. Despite being one of the highest paid athletes on the planet, his 2024 highlights have taken place in front of a small audience, the final figures hidden like everything else Saudi Arabia doesn’t want us to know about. This is not an overwhelmingly new or progressive audience, either. These people were already fans of golf.

This cannot go on forever. Among the myriad concerns raised by the emergence of LIV Golf (and by no means the most important) was sustainability, and what this batch of overpaid golfers leave behind. Legacies in golf are overplayed, like everything else – who really has one? – but anyone complicit in destroying the game certainly will.

Rahm's legacy, meanwhile, will make no mention of the fact that he is now the proud owner of a gaudy, gold ring. Another attempt to make golf something that it is not, instead confirming to critics that it is and always has been precisely this.

Destruction is not yet guaranteed. Should the Public Investment Fund and Strategic Sports Group agree terms on a deal to reunite men's professional golf, then it’s possible that many generations to come will benefit. That will depend on whether each of these parties sees a profitable future, in strictly monetary terms. The game is now hostage to that and as one which requires long-term investment from viewers, let alone financers, it’s hard not to worry.

LIV Golf didn’t create golf’s problems, but it did expose and inflate them. And rather than inspire those currently safeguarding the sport into finding solutions, it sent many of the protagonists rushing to get theirs while they can, in turn confirming to many that golf is by the rich, for the rich, the game itself secondary.

As those of us who love it know, the game is anything but secondary, which is why it continues to flourish at amateur level. And at a professional level, we saw two of its strongest parts last week – the way its intrigue can be enhanced by the landscape in Northern Ireland; the way it can be enhanced by the intensity of genuine competition in Virginia.

Rahm could’ve been different. He could’ve been true to his own words, words which told us he didn’t see any appeal in playing over three rounds for starters; that he values some accolades above others because of their historical significance. He could’ve said that he felt betrayed by the PGA Tour, but that taking the money from LIV was not going to solve anything for him or for the game he so clearly loves.

Instead, he was at Bolingbrook last week. You may well have missed it.