Jon Rahm is not just one of the best golfers in the world right now, he’s one of the best to ever do it. That’s right, if Rahm never played another round of competitive golf again, he would already be, give or take, the 45th most accomplished player ever.
I’m a bit of a golf history nerd, and I like to keep a running pyramid of the greatest players in our sport’s history. Shouts to Bill Simmons for the inspiration. With 19 world-wide wins and two majors, Rahm is already in a tier of golfers such as Mark O’Meara, Retief Goosen, and his Spanish compatriot, Jose Maria Olazabal. For context, Mark O’Meara played competitively on the PGA Tour for 24 years. He also won 19 times, played in 110 majors, finished in the top-10 in 12 majors, and won two of them. From an on-course accomplishments standpoint, O’Meara has had one of the 50 greatest careers ever. Rahm has the exact same resume as O’Meara: 19 wins, 11 major top-10s, two major wins. The only difference is that he accomplished this in seven years, as opposed to 24.
Jon Rahm is entirely on pace to finish his career as a top-20 player of all time. Let’s take Seve Ballesteros for example, a worthy comparison to Rahm from both a national and competitive standpoint. I currently have Ballesteros as the 12th most accomplished golfer ever. The Spaniard won 54 times world-wide, played in 87 majors, recorded 20 major top-10s, three runner-ups, and five major wins. Ballesteros played at a highly competitive level for 20 years across the PGA Tour and DP World Tour. At 29 years old, let’s assume that Rahm has (conservatively) 12 more years of highly competitive golf left in the tank? Over a 12 year stretch, would it be possible for Rahm to win 35 times and three majors?
This is actually more reasonable than it sounds. On his current pace, Rahm is averaging 2.7 wins per year, and a major every 15 starts. If he continues that trajectory for the next 12 years, he’ll win 32 times and secure three more majors. Ironically, that would put him at nearly exactly where Seve finished his career. While that pace may be a tad unsustainable in his late thirties and early forties, I wouldn’t be surprised if Rahm’s elite play continues well into his twilight years either. Golfers generally start to see a decline in performance by age 42, with a few exceptions to the rule, which is why I conservatively gave Rahm 12 more years of highly competitive golf. With that being said, he’s experienced no major injuries, his swing is incredibly simple and repeatable, and it’s not a motion that places a great deal of strain on his body. Yes, Rahm has some serious work to do to catch his Spanish idol, but it’s not remotely a stretch to suggest that he’s on pace to get there.
Here’s where things get more complicated. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, Jon Rahm is the newest member of LIV golf, a Saudi backed league that currently hosts 14 tournaments a year, each spanning 54 holes. The field generally consists of 48 players. There are multiple aspects of LIV that make it incredibly challenging to place in context. Firstly, the field size. A typical PGA Tour or DP World Tour event has a field double, if not nearly triple the size of a LIV event. Just in terms of sheer volume, you can do the math on how that complicates evaluating how a LIV win compares to a PGA Tour/DP World Tour win. The 54-hole aspect adds another wrinkle. I still have players such as Carry Middlecoff and Gene Sarazen in my pyramid. Even all of their wins came over the course of four day events. Speaking of Middlecoff and Sarazen, I’m willing to grant some leniency in the field strength department. No, the level of competition on LIV is not what it is on the PGA Tour. Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Walter Hagen, and Gene Sarazen, four of the 10 greatest golfers of all time, often competed against plumbers and firemen. You can only beat the guys that show up that day.
I can’t penalize Hogan or Snead for being born too early. They didn’t have a choice. Rahm did have a choice however, and he chose the path of least resistance. At least it seems that way now. Whether he deserves detraction in the legacy department for making a conscious choice to play against weaker competition is an entirely separate topic. In fairness, it’s not like Seve’s competition across the pond in the eighties was anything to write home about either. Yes, he regularly played against the likes of Nick Faldo, Sandy Lyle, Bernhard Langer, Ian Woosnam, Jose Maria Olazabal, and Colin Montgomerie. Faldo and Langer are both top-30 players of all time, but so are Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson. Point being, what Jon Rahm accomplishes on LIV still means something, but this move, at the very least, muddies his place in golf history.
Context is ultimately king, and I do my best to analyze all factors involved in my amateur hobby of golf historian. I’ve counted Brooks Koepka’s success on LIV as legitimate wins that add to his career resume, but I certainly understand the case against that. I would imagine that all golf fans, whether they care about the history of the sport or not, hope that Rahm’s move to LIV signifies a step closer to a unified golf world. What many fail to realize, particularly those playing at the highest level, is that golf is far too niche to have room for two competing Tours, both from a financial and eyeballs perspective. Both are intrinsically related. 20 million people watch the NFL every week. 1 million people watch the PGA Tour every week. A small fraction of that tunes into LIV. Point being, it’s easy to get caught up in our golf Twitter bubble and think that we matter. In the context of the larger sports ecosystem, we don’t.
Jon Rahm is a tremendous golfer. I believe him to be the best active player on the planet. He’s gained over two strokes to the field per round for five straight years, the longest active streak of any player in golf. During that five year stretch, Rahm has played 112 times, with 81 top-20s, 41 top-fives, 14 wins, and two majors. His career win rate of 11.8% is the highest of any active player. As previously alluded to, I’m bullish that he retires as one of the 15 greatest to ever do it. And yet still, he will not be bringing a significant amount of new viewers to the LIV Tour, just like he wasn’t bringing a significant amount of viewers to the PGA Tour. Rahm is a generationally great player, and he still wasn’t remotely worth his LIV contract. I get it, “his market is what someone will pay for him.” Yet what happens when the buyer doesn’t play by the same rules as the market? If a billionaire decides to hand a $100 dollar bill to their barista every time they walk into Starbucks, is that the price of coffee?
The goal for every fan in this should be the same. Golf is in a completely sub-optimal position if Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka, and Jordan Spieth get to compete against each other four times a year. I don’t want to hear about the soccer model. Soccer is a big enough sport to support a widely dispersed market, golf is not. Yes, this fractured golf world has elevated the majors, a sentence I’m incredibly tired of hearing. That was the one aspect of the sport that didn’t need elevating. Everything else did. Deeming every non-major week irrelevant is not what we should choose to accept as fans. Not that we ever had a say in the matter.
I wanted to write about Jon Rahm today, not to share my cynicism on the state of professional golf, but rather to reflect on how truly transcendent of a player he is, and attempt to make sense of how to measure greatness in golf going forwards. His performance during four weeks of the year may be the best answer for this question, but one I’m hesitant to accept. Frankly, it’s not one that any golf fan should be forced to accept.
I will be one of the few to tune in to watch Jon Rahm play golf on the LIV Tour. Not because I like shotgun starts, or the broadcast, or the Iron Heads, or tournaments devoid of historical context. I’ll watch because Jon Rahm is a transcendentally great player in the prime of his career, and players of his caliber don’t come around that often. We should all be able to appreciate greatness at any level, in any sport, under serious, or incredibly unserious circumstances. Hopefully the context will come later.
