🤔 Jon Rahm And The $500 Million Decision He Can’t Un-Make
Here’s where we are: Jon Rahm is reportedly weighing whether to go all-in on LIV Golf 2.0 or find a way back to the PGA Tour, and nobody — including possibly Rahm — knows what the right answer is. He left the Tour at the absolute peak of his powers, fresh off a Masters title, with a reported deal somewhere north of $300 million. On paper, generational wealth secured. Career, complicated. (source)
The problem is that the landscape shifted under him. LIV was supposed to be the rival league that forced a permanent reckoning. Then came the framework agreement, then the stalling, then more stalling, and now LIV 2.0 is supposed to fix everything — more events, maybe OWGR points eventually, maybe major access. Maybe. Rahm bet on a timeline that kept moving, and his world ranking has slid accordingly while the Tour’s next generation has been grinding real competitive reps every week.
Here’s the actual take: the merger framework changes the calculation more than people are admitting. Rahm went to LIV when it felt like permanent exile. It’s not anymore — or at least it doesn’t have to be. But a return to the PGA Tour is not a reset button. He’d come back having played weaker competition for years, needing to rebuild ranking points the hard way, fighting for his place in fields he used to own outright. The argument for staying is that LIV 2.0 might finally deliver the legitimacy it always promised. The argument against is that you’re betting your legacy on an organization that has already missed every self-imposed deadline it ever set.
If I’m Jon Rahm, I’m signing nothing until OWGR eligibility is resolved in writing, with a hard date. His career still has major championship chapters left in it — but only if he can enter the tournaments that actually matter. Without that, the money is great and the legacy is unfinished, and he knows it.
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🕊️ Jessica Bang
Jessica Bang, an 18-year-old Australian professional golfer, died this week after suffering a brain haemorrhage at a KLPGA qualifying event in Bangkok. She was eighteen years old, she was good enough to be on that range, and she had the whole thing in front of her. (source)
Nothing to add. Just awful. Thinking about her family and everyone who loved her.
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📸 Rick Shiels Apparently Thought “Posted On Reddit” Meant “Free To Use”
A golfer shared their own course photos on r/golf, Rick Shiels reposted them to his massive audience with ZERO credit, and the original poster — bless them — responded by saying they’re just happy he noticed them. (source)
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💼 The Last Mid-Am Standing At Merion Came To Network
Christian Cavaliere wasn’t just competing at the U.S. Amateur — he was there to promote his company, Tremont Sporting Co., and Golf.com ran the whole pitch as a human interest story. The U.S. Amateur is now apparently a trade show with match play brackets attached. (source)
Respect to anyone who can compete at Merion AND keep a business running. That’s genuinely hard. But the fact that a U.S. Amateur press release sailed through a major golf outlet without anyone blinking says everything about how normalized the pitch pipeline has gotten. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive, well, and standing on the first tee at stroke play.
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🥚 Evnroll Named Their New Putter Technology “EZPZ” And Shipped It Like That
Guerin Rife spent DECADES developing groove technology for putter faces, and the brand name the team landed on for their big 2026 launch is EZPZ — as in, the thing you text someone after parallel parking goes well. (source)
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😤 Brooks Koepka Is Disappointed In His Year And He Wants A Word
Brooks sat down with the Fore Play crew and did not hold back on how badly his 2026 season stung him. Which — respect. There is genuinely no one in professional golf more watchable when he’s running a grievance. (source)
The guy set his own bar so high with back-to-back major runs that a “bad year” looks confusing from the outside. But he clearly feels it and he’s not performing contentment he doesn’t have. Koepka accountability era is one of this sport’s more underrated ongoing storylines and the Fore Play guys are the right venue for it.
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🏌️ Scottie Has Already Switched Drivers Again, In Case You Were Keeping Score
Scottie Scheffler teed it up at the FedEx St. Jude playoffs with a TaylorMade Qi4D driver after quietly ditching whatever he was gaming before, meaning he has now switched drivers MORE TIMES THIS SEASON than most of us have hit fairways. (source)
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🦅 She Made An Albatross. Then She Conceded One. Golf Is Genuinely Unwell.
Lillian Guleserian made an albatross at the Massachusetts Women’s State Amateur. Legendary. Then her opponent nearly made one too, and Guleserian — already holding a double-eagle in her pocket — conceded the putt before it dropped. (source)
TWO albatrosses in one match. Most of us have witnessed zero albatrosses in person. Some of us have never made eagle. These two were out here trading double-eagles like they were spare change and then being perfectly sportsmanlike about the whole thing. Completely normal Tuesday in Massachusetts, apparently.
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That’s the week. Jon Rahm is negotiating his legacy like a free agent who already cashed his signing bonus, a putter company named their product after an emoji response, and somewhere outside Boston two women made albatrosses at each other without making the national news. Sort yourselves out. See you at TPC Southwind. 🏌️
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