Rory McIlroy’s Plea Echoes Through Jon Rahm’s ‘F1 Model’ Demands: A New System Will End LIV & PGA Tour’s Disruptive Gap

The game of golf continues to remain in shreds. While one end of this tug-of-war-like situation is in the hands of the PGA Tour, the other remains clutched by the LIV Golf players. In this divided environment, Jon Rahm has emerged as another player who seems to agree with Rory McIlroy’s dream of unifying golf in the form of a “world tour.”

However, Rahm’s standards for this envisioned reality are slightly different from those of the Northern Irishman, who compares his “dream scenario” to the “Champions League in European football.” Rahm, on the other hand, emphasizes the “need to follow the F1 model.” But the crux of their separate dreams from two separate ends of the golf world remains the same: the need to make changes to formulate a World Tour that is fed into by the rest of the Tours.

For Rahm, this change manifests in the need for LIV Golf to change its format and switch to the accepted 72-hole format to help ease the unification of the sport. In the 29-year-old’s words, “We need to follow the F1 model. I’ve told both tours. In fact, a lot of things LIV has done have been based on Formula 1…we are going to have to be playing worldwide. And you want to have the best players world.” 

Ever since its inception, the Saudi- League has been continuously bashed for its 54-hole format. It is one of the factors that the Spaniard thinks is holding the league back, and if the circuit had the traditional 4-day format, this would have helped his argument significantly. “I’ve made this comparison that you have the Spanish La Liga, Premier League, Bundesliga, they all have the same product. The closer we can get LIV Golf to some other things the better it might be for unification and feeding a world tour like that,” said the reigning Masters champion.

Moving towards the traditional format would also help ease the way for LIV Golf to gain access to the majors as the main point of contestation remains a 54-hole format adopted by the breakaway league, which is not accepted by organizations like the OWGR.

The newly defected LIV star has been pretty vocal about things ever since his defection. Earlier, he preferred not to engage in any PGA Tour or LIV Golf discussions, but now that is not the case. He also recently shared his two cents about the impending $3 billion merger.

Jon Rahm on the PGA Tour-PIF merger’s future

The Legion XIII captain recently gave hope to the golf world by hinting that the long, impending merger might “be closer than ever” to finalizing than is largely being perceived. He even pointed in the direction that the recently held meeting that involved Tiger Woods, Yasir Al-Rumayyun, and the PGA Tour had “some discussions that haven’t been there in the past.”

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When asked if he thinks his unexpected defection added to the ongoing air of unification, Rahm added, “I think I could be the start of a tipping point, yeah. I understood the weight that that decision could have and the impact it could have. That’s why it wasn’t such an easy decision.”

As Jon Rahm and the 12 other golfers proceed to Magnolia Lane in the coming days, it still remains to be seen if the future editions of the first major of the season will have more LIV golfers or not, following the Spanish pro’s suggestions.

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