Jon Rahm on Phil Mickelson’s latest swipe at the PGA Tour: ‘I truly don’t know why he said that’

By Evin Priest
Jon Rahm and Phil Mickelson are friends, despite Rahm remaining on the PGA Tour and six-time major winner Mickelson joining LIV Golf. They have been tight since first meeting when Rahm was playing college golf at Lefty’s old stomping ground, Arizona State. Mickelson’s brother Tim was ASU head coach at the time.

Rahm has been outspoken in his defence of Mickelson, since the American’s comments in April about his new series and the PGA Tour, with Rahm insisting Mickelson’s legacy “shouldn’t change because of a couple of comments”.

But on Tuesday, Rahm took umbrage with Mickelson and criticism he threw at the PGA Tour last week ahead of the LIV Invitational series event in Saudi Arabia. Mickelson said that the amount of top players moving to LIV indicated LIV was “trending upwards [while] I see the PGA Tour trending downwards and I love the side that I’m on”.

LIV’s biggest signings to date have included World No. 3 Cameron Smith, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Joaquin Niemann.

Rahm, never one to mince his words, wasn’t having any of Mickelson’s remarks.

“I love Phil, but I don’t know what he’s talking about,” Rahm said on Tuesday at Congaree Golf Club, site of this week’s CJ Cup. “Changes don’t necessarily mean trending downward. There are some changes being made, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going down, right? I truly don’t know why he said that.”

The changes Rahm was referring to were three significant moves the PGA Tour made to combat the growing threat of LIV. The biggest development, which was driven by Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods, will see the tour move to a new schedule in 2023 featuring 12 elevated events with $15 million to $20 million purses, in addition to the four majors and the Players Championship.

The top 20 players, as determined by the Player Impact Programme (PIP), will commit to those 17 tournaments as well as play in three additional PGA Tour events of their choosing. The PIP will also grow from $40 million to $100 million, while an Earnings Assurance Programme will guarantee all exempt PGA Tour players who play at least 15 events will be paid a minimum of $500,000 for the season regardless of whether they earn that much in tournament prize money.

Mickelson, though, hinted no tour could compete with the billions behind LIV through the Saudi PIF fund. LIV will hold a $50 million team championship at Trump Doral next week to cap its inaugural season.

“The game of golf is very lucky to have the PIF invest in the game,” Mickelson said. “The sport of the game of golf is being influxed with billions of dollars now. And the ability to go global and make golf a truly global sport is really beneficial for the game.”