Golf Channel Analyst Torches Jon Rahm, Says He Wants To Wring His Neck After His Comments About PGA Tour
Since officially announcing his decision to join LIV Golf this past December, Jon Rahm hasn't sounded like a man fully convinced that he made the right move. Over the past few months, the Spaniard has talked about how he misses tournaments on the PGA Tour schedule, but his comments ahead of this week's PGA Championship took the sentiment that he truly misses the Tour to a new level.
Given the very real divide in professional golf at the moment between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour, players are viewed as being on one side or the other, but Rahm doesn't see it that way.
"You guys keep saying ‘the other side’ but I'm still a PGA Tour member, whether suspended or not," Rahm told the media at Valhalla.
"I still want to support the PGA Tour and I think that's an important distinction to make. I don't feel like I'm on the other side. I'm just not playing there, that's at least personally."
Rahm joined LIV Golf for a reported $500 million, so his message of still wanting to be a supporter of the Tour while simultaneously hurting the Tour by leaving and cashing in on a generational payday understandably rubs some people the wrong way.
Golf Channel analyst Arron Oberholser is one of those people.
"He doesn’t get it," Oberholser said. "To this day, he doesn’t get it. This is a guy who wanted a position or wanted to be heard, from what I understand. Either a board position, policy board, he wanted to be heard on this whole thing before he went to LIV. And I feel like he wasn’t as heard as much as he probably should’ve been, and now, I’m glad he wasn’t in that position because he doesn’t get it.
"I’m incensed by that, quite honestly, … by the level of naiveté – that you don’t get it. You still don’t get it. You took 500 large, and then you’re gonna sit there and tell me, ‘Oh, you still feel like a PGA Tour member? I want to support the PGA Tour.’ I mean, I want to wring his neck through the television. I’m that mad right now. I’m that mad."
Rahm has made it clear since joining LIV Golf that money played a sizable factor in his decision to do so. Being offered half a billion dollars to go play golf is an offer very few people on Earth would turn down, but it's clear the two-time major winner is struggling to appreciate his updated bank account while not being able to compete week in and week out on the PGA Tour.