Jon Rahm, LIV players face uncertain future after season finale at Indy

Jon Rahm is under contract wiht LIV Golf through next season. Pic: Justin Casterline/Getty Images

Jon Rahm finished the LIV Golf season Sunday in style — claiming his third straight season points title and his second team crown in a row at the revised season finale in suburban Indianapolis.

Now the 31-year-old Spaniard and the other full-time tour players will wait to see what happens to LIV in 2027.

Rahm is ready to head home and contemplate the future.

“I’m looking forward to going home and helping my very pregnant wife with the kids,” Rahm said. “The fourth one is due in October, and I’m happy to be dad for a few days before I get back to grinding for the Irish Open, and mainly looking forward to a haircut because I need one badly.” 

Rahm closed with a 7-under 63 for his second straight runner-up finish in Indy. He ended up a stroke behind 22-year-old Michael La Sasso, the 2025 NCAA individual champ at Mississippi. La Sasso finished with a 65 to get to 18 under.

Clearly, there have been troubling signs for the LIV circuit in recent months.

In April, it was announced Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund would end its investment in the league after this season. LIV spent more than $5 billion in five years, pulling some of the world’s best and most popular American and international players away from other leagues.

Organisers also canceled two events this season — New Orleans in June and next weekend’s originally scheduled season-ending event in Michigan — as well the weekend entertainment.

LIV CEO Scott O’Neil told reporters Wednesday he was bullish about plans for 2027 and beyond, saying players would be equity owners and have their commercial rights restored. O’Neil said the plan was to have five team championships overseas and five individual tournaments in the United States scheduled close to the majors for those who qualify for them.

He did not name the lead investor with whom LIV has reached an agreement. Several outlets have identified him as Ted Goldthorpe of BC Partners, who met with the tour’s players on Tuesday. O’Neil said there was a deadline for players to commit to LIV 2.0 without citing a specific date. He also has not mentioned the size of the proposed investment.

Though O’Neil said he has a “good level of confidence” that a “critical mass of the right players” will return. Rahm is under contract through next season. Bryson DeChambeau — the other big name — has an expiring contract this year. He tied for third with Sergio Garcia on Sunday and did not speak with reporters following Sunday’s event.

But with the season now over, there are only more questions.

“There’s been a lot that’s surrounded all of us pretty much since we joined, and at the end of the day when you step on the golf course, it’s just golf,” Rahm said after bogeying his last hole to open the door for La Sasso. 

“So all the problems and theories go away, and you compete. It hasn’t been any harder or any easier in any way. It’s just, kind of I think, the life of a pro athlete.” 

Despite the cloudy future and the historic flooding in central Indiana that forced organisers to improvise how to get spectators parked and shuttled to The Club at Chatham Hills, in many ways things went off largely as expected.

Organisers set up electronic scoreboards and video boards as well as temporary suites around the course. There were advertising signs for Riyadh Air and other sponsors, chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” as La Sossa rolled in his 2-foot putt on No. 18 to secure the win and the celebratory champaign spray.

Those who attended last year’s first tourney at The Club at Chatham Hills thought things went even better at the expanded four-round event.

“It was more well managed from the way they had the ropes set up, just getting in a little cleaner with the traffic so the operation itself was more smooth than last year,” Westfield resident Jacob Meyer said.

Meyer’s friend, Jackson Gangwer, added: “It’s just more relaxed. Last year it seemed a little more intense since it was the first year being out here.” Last year’s attendance for the three-round event drew more than 60,000 fans, an American record for a LIV event. Organizers did not announce this year’s tournament.

But the tour brought top-flight men’s golf back to metropolitan Indianapolis for the first time since it hosted the 2012 and 2016 BMW Championships, and it opened the door a new group of fans, some of whom had never attended a major pro event.

If this is the end of the line for LIV Golf, it came in a fitting location — about 30 miles from the arena where the Indiana Pacers closed out their time in the American Basketball Association in 1976 and that hosted Elvis Presley’s final concert in 1977.

And after playing in front of the Indy fans each of the past two years, he had a message for those who came back.

“I just want to say think you. It’s been incredibly fun to play in front of a crowd this enthusiastic,” Rahm said. “I’m sure everybody here has friends, family or themselves who have had to deal with some of the flooding issues and you know my heart goes out to all those people that lost their homes and lost loved. But the fact so many people came out and supported us means a lot.”