Jon Rahm walked down the 18th hole at Fanling Golf Club on Sunday finally at ease. His lead was five over Thomas Detry, and his 539-day winless drought was all but snapped.
When he tapped in for a closing bogey, he pumped his fist and exhaled.
“Very relieving,” Rahm said after his LIV Golf Hong Kong win. “That’s the only way I can describe it. I’ve been very ecstatic for wins in the past. This one just feels like a big weight off my shoulder. That’s all I can say.”
The wait had been long for the two-time major winner. He’ll tell you he has won since LIV Chicago in 2024, but also not. There was the Individual Championship he took home last year, despite never hoisting a trophy. Rahm called that “bittersweet.” There was the 2025 Ryder Cup win with Team Europe at Bethpage Black. That was a win he’ll never forget, something countless individual wins couldn’t overshadow.
But Rahm hasn’t won, by himself, in 18 months. He has been close. He has lost in playoffs, been outdueled and run down. He has answered questions about a top-10 streak that he admitted is helped by LIV’s small fields. He has brushed off critiques of his major record since joining the breakaway league. He made a valiant Sunday charge at the 2025 PGA Championship before imploding on Quail Hollow’s Green Mile.
It has been a trek for Rahm to get back to the winner’s circle. And this week in Hong Kong was perhaps a perfect encapsulation of the LIV Golf road Rahm has traversed.
It began with difficult questions and unknowable answers.
On Tuesday, there was Rahm explaining why he rejected the DP World Tour’s offer to grant LIV players conditional releases to compete in LIV events without incurring further sanctions. Eight players accepted the offer. Rahm declined. He didn’t like that part of the deal would ask him to play six events instead of four to keep his Euro Tour membership, with the DP World Tour having a say in two of the events he’d tee it up at.
“I don’t like what they’re doing currently with the contract they’re having us sign,” Rahm said. “I don’t like the conditions. They’re asking me to play a minimum of six events, and they dictate where two of those have to be, amongst other things that I don’t agree with.
“I don’t know what game they’re trying to play right now, but it just seems like in a way they’re using our impact in tournaments and fining us and trying to benefit both ways from what we have to offer, and it’s just — in a way they’re extorting players like myself and young players that have nothing to do with the politics of the game. So I don’t like the situation and I’m not going to agree to that.”
Rahm, who has said his fines from the DP World Tour total over $3 million, won’t budge. He is still waiting for his appeal to a UK arbitration board to be heard. He’s clearly hoping that since the OWGR now recognizes LIV as part of the professional ecosystem, the ruling will be different than the one LIV players lost in 2023. If it isn’t, he won’t be able to be a DP World Tour member without paying his fines, which he has said he won’t do. That means no Ryder Cup.
Rahm’s Ryder Cup future was the prevailing topic of the professional golf world early in the week. Luke Donald, who will captain Team Europe for a third straight Cup in 2027, was asked about it. He has not yet talked to Rahm but plans to do so soon. Rory McIlroy, who has been the heartbeat of this current group along with Rahm, said it was a “shame” Rahm rejected a “generous” offer.
But while currently unanswerable questions about his future were being batted around, Rahm chartered a plane to help several LIV players escape the Middle East as the American and Israeli attacks against Iran continued. As GOLF’s Alan Bastable first reported, the players — Thomas Detry, Sam Horsfield, Anirban Lahiri, Adrian Meronk, Tom McKibbin, Caleb Surratt, Lee Westwood and his caddie — had to make a 280-mile drive from Dubai to Muscat, Oman, where they hopped on a private jet that Rahm arranged through a partnership with the private aviation company, VistaJet.
“I was raised with a value of, if you have the ability and the capability of helping somebody in need, you go and help them,” Rahm said of his act on Sunday. “It was never about karma. It was simply about luckily getting those boys out of a dangerous situation. Like I said earlier, sometimes it wasn’t even about golf.”
The early part of the week was not about the golf for Rahm. Then, as it always does, golf became everything.
Rahm has been knocking on the door of a LIV win for the entire time his drought has gone on. He is omnipresent on the Saudi-backed league’s leaderboards, and yet, he has been unable to get it over the line. He has lost to Adrian Meronk by two, to Talor Gooch by one, to Dean Burmeister in a playoff, to Sebastian Munoz in a playoff, to Elvis Smylie by one and blown a five-shot Sunday lead to Anthony Kim.
Naturally, Rahm found himself on the leaderboard again this week in Hong Kong, entering Sunday tied for the lead with Harold Varner III and Detry, whom he helped get out of the Middle East. It was another opportunity for Rahm to get back to the winning ways that defined his pre-LIV career, or another chance to come up just short.
“You have to keep putting yourself in contention and giving yourself chances,” Rahm said Saturday. “As long as I’m doing that, I’m playing good golf, take advantage of the opportunities I get, but it’ll come. As I’m playing solid golf, I’m hoping tomorrow I have a good Sunday and get it done.”
Rahm fell behind Varner early but made birdies at 3, 4, 7 and. 8 to jump in front. When he reeled off four straight birdies from 13 through 16, all that was left was the walk to the trophy and a different question — one he’s more than happy to try and answer now that he put his winless drought to bed.
“There was a lot going on this week, and I think there was still a little bit of tension in me on that first day,” Rahm said with the trophy in hand. “Coming down the stretch, the swings from 13 through 16 were absolutely perfect swings. I think those holes is pretty much peak Jon Rahm that we can see.
“Can it get better?” Rahm asked. “I hope so, but I’ve been playing pretty good golf.”
