Jon Rahm’s LIV Golf move showed ‘he could be bought’ says analyst | Golf | Sport

As the PGA Tour and LIV Golf slowly inch closer towards an agreement, Jon Rahm expressed his enthusiasm surrounding a future deal, even describing his £450 million defection to the Saudi-backed league as a “turning point” in negotiations but Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee has taken issue with Masters champion’s assessment.

While speaking to BBC ahead of his Masters title defence, Rahm conceded that the “balance of golf could be disturbed a little bit” by his departure from the PGA Tour, alleging that few other golfers had a “bigger impact” than him on the sport last year.

“I could be the start of a tipping point in that sense,” he said on Monday. “I understood the weight that decision could have and the impact it could have. I understood that perfectly and that’s why it wasn’t an easy decision.”

Not everyone was willing to give Rahm his due praise for supposedly kickstarting a merger between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour. Chamblee — who has adamantly criticised the former tour in the past — slammed the Spaniard, insisting his decision to leave was purely based on monetary gain.

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“Jon Rahm thought his departure was gonna be the tipping point. It wasn’t the tipping point at all,” Chamblee began.

“Generally speaking, I think that he went from being viewed as his own man to being somebody that could be bought. He went from being viewed as somebody who would state their principle very clearly of history and legacy, and then turns back on those principles for money and finances.

“The thread that runs through every single aspect of life, and none of us can really say who held the money that we have in our hands before we did, but when you know exactly who is paying you and exactly what they’re paying you for and at its core is malevolent in nature, you can’t pretend that the impulse to take the money is good when it was so heavily fertilised in greed.”

Rahm, to his credit, has hardly been phased by the predominantly negative response to his transition to LIV Golf. “Well, I am a human being so to an extent you care what people think about you – but not in this case,” he told the Guardian in regards to the unfavourable perception he’s garnered. “I understand if somebody disagrees with me but it doesn’t really have an effect on me.

“I think it was different circumstances to a lot of other players moving. For the most part, I haven’t heard a lot of negative stuff from other players. There are always going to be people who don’t like it, who don’t approve but overall it hasn’t been much of an issue.”

As for a unification between golf’s rival circuits, Rahm claimed there are “definitely some discussions that haven’t been there in the past,” and both sides appear to be “closer to some kind of unification than ever.”