Ryder Cup 2023: Jon Rahm urges organizations to make unified decisions on LIV Golf golfers in Rome

Jon Rahm will almost certainly be at this year’s Ryder Cup in Rome, but the team that joins him on the European side for the biennial competition has never been more famous. It’s not just the Europeans, as the US team will have some decisions to make when it comes to events in September — especially when it comes to LIV Golf participants participating in the events. festival.

“There are some people who will have to make some tough choices, right?” Rahm said on Tuesday at the Tournament of Champions, where he will kick off his 2023 campaign. “A bit of that is out of my reach. I guess I hope the US PGA and the European Tour come to a decision together. I don’t think it’s smart to have a team that allows LIV players and a team does not.

“And besides, even if they decide not to be there, I think it will give a lot of great young players an opportunity to come out and have a chance in Europe, won’t it? That will be an opportunity. We’ve seen a younger American team in the Ryder Cup before and they did what they did. So I hope these young people have grown up watching the Ryder Cup and seeing their idols. Theirs does what they do, let’s say, it energizes the team a bit in any way and we’re there to win.”

The decisions aren’t unusual, of course, as captains on both sides always have to make picks for matches (both teams will have six wildcard picks this year). But the organizations running the event — the PGA of America on the US side and the European Tour on the European side — have some more philosophical choices to make before the captains make their choices.

Specifically (as Rahm noted): Are LIV Golf players eligible for the Ryder Cup?

Some of the top players in the world have left the PGA Tour and European Tour in 2022 for a Saudi-backed start-up golf tournament, and both of those tournaments have attempted to suspend those players from competing. fight. The PGA Tour succeeded in doing so while a court ruled that European Tour players could — at this time — compete in European Tour events. A court must make Final judgment in February.

There has been much debate about what this means for players outside of these two leagues. masters, for example, recently said that any LIV players who qualify for their 2023 event will be eligible to play for that event. This may seem perfunctory, but given how chaotic last year was, it was considered big news.

In September, the PGA Tour – which, again, is a very different organization from the US PGA – banned all golfers from the Presidents Cup, which is held both in the United States and internationally. Interestingly, international captain Trevor Immelman asked why Louis Oosthuizen couldn’t compete when he gave up his PGA Tour membership and a Presidents Cup international player doesn’t need to be a PGA Tour member to compete. at the Presidents Cup. He was told that Oosthuizen violated PGA Tour rules while still a member.

All of this is messy and it can be argued which team it will affect more. Of the top 12 players on the European side (according to Data Golf), only one — Paul Casey — is a LIV player, even though Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood are on track to make it into that top 12. Americans, only Dustin Johnson made the top 12 while no one else made the top 20 (Talor Gooch ranked 25th).

The European Tour is more binding than the US PGA and the final decision will likely be dictated by what the Euro side wants. After trying to prevent players from playing during its tour, a face when it comes to the Ryder Cup it also runs will feel dishonest. Again, this probably (?) won’t matter much when it comes to team building, but Rahm wants Garcia there, and Rahm has a lot of influence on the European side.

Regardless of how it plays out, this will be one of the bigger storylines of 2023. All of our focus is on what the major championships will determine when it comes to golfers. LIV, but the Ryder Cup (and both organizations that run it) are in that boat, too. And while major decisions will affect a small percentage of the fields in which they play, Ryder Cup selections can (possibly!) have a big influence on the actual outcome of this year’s event.