As the 2025 PGA Championship prepares to tee off this Thursday at Philadelphia’s Aronimink Golf Club, two-time major champion and current LIV Golf points leader Jon Rahm is pushing aside off-course uncertainty surrounding LIV Golf’s future to focus on his performance on the greens. The Spanish star, who has dominated LIV Golf competition this season, says he remains confident that league officials will craft a viable long-term plan after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) confirmed it will pull all future funding beyond the end of 2025.
Rahm, who left the PGA Tour to join LIV Golf in December 2023 and has since claimed back-to-back LIV season titles, opened up about the funding crisis at a pre-tournament press conference Tuesday. He noted that while the financial shakeup is a significant challenge for the league, it is ultimately an issue outside of his control as a player.
“It’s something we’ve had to deal with, but these are just matters out of my hands,” Rahm said. “Fixing this is the job of the people leading LIV Golf, and I don’t envy that task for a second. I do have full faith in the work they’re doing, and I trust they will come up with a strong survival plan. Until that plan is shared with the players, there’s no use in me expending extra energy worrying about it.”
The 31-year-old, who claimed major wins at the 2021 U.S. Open and 2023 Masters, has been in stellar form this LIV season, notching tournament victories in Hong Kong (March) and Mexico City (April) along with runner-up finishes in Riyadh, Adelaide and South Africa. He pointed out the stark irony of his situation: golf requires intense focus and control over every shot, but off-course business decisions are completely out of the players’ hands.
“It’s funny, in a sport where we crave control over every single detail, how little control we actually have off the course,” Rahm explained. “I have full control over my own golf game and how I perform this week. Everything else? That’s out of my hands.”
When asked about reflections on his 2023 decision to leave the PGA Tour for LIV, Rahm said any takeaways are personal, but added his core philosophy is to approach decisions without regret. “If circumstances change after you make a choice, like what’s happening with LIV right now, that’s an after-the-fact development, not a flaw in the original decision,” he said. Rahm also pushed back on the idea that his high-profile move was intended to help bridge the long-running rift between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf. “I never thought I’d be some kind of catalyst to tip the scales and bring the two sides together,” he said. “We don’t know what tomorrow will bring, and all we can do is learn from both good and bad experiences from the past.”
Not everyone shares Rahm’s optimism, however. Reigning Masters champion Rory McIlroy, a longstanding critic of LIV Golf, pointed out that the funding cut was always a foreseeable risk for players who jumped to the breakaway league for eight-figure contracts and large purses. “This was always a possibility, and everyone knew it,” McIlroy said. “Geopolitical shifts in the Middle East played a big role in this. When your entire funding model is tied to global political priorities, you’re on an inherently unstable path. When the Saudis’ priorities changed, that put LIV in a very precarious position — but this was a risk those players chose to take.”
McIlroy added that he was aware PIF would be ending future support before LIV Golf made the news public. “It looks like the rug was pulled out from under them out of nowhere, and a lot of people were caught off guard,” he said. “Right now, there’s a huge amount of uncertainty. From what I’ve seen, LIV has some sponsorship revenue lined up, but it’s unclear how long that will last. If they do manage to put together a schedule for 2026, it’s almost certainly going to look drastically different than what we’ve seen from them so far.”