Jon Rahm still apparently has a friend in Rory McIlroy, who was receptive to Rahm's move from the PGA Tour to LIV Golf both publicly and privately. Tiger Woods, on the other hand, has been less receptive. Rahm said he reached out to Tiger after leaving the Tour for a massive LIV Golf deal believed to be well into the nine figures but never heard back from the 15-time major champion.
"Rory has been supportive publicly of my decision, and he was privately as well. Tiger, not really," Rahm, a two-time major winner, said in an interview with ESPN. "I texted him, and the people that tried to reach out throughout the process when I signed and just let them know, 'Hey, this is a personal decision. I have nothing against anybody.'"
Rahm initially pledged his "fealty" to the PGA Tour in February 2022, but said the framework agreement between the PGA Tour and LIV -- not to mention how much his offer was to leave the Tour for LIV Golf -- changed the way he thought about the decision.
"As an athlete and entertainer, I think I owe it to myself to hear the other side out, and that's what I did. ... I have the right to do what I think is best for myself and my family, period. As a father and a husband, I have the duty to set myself up as best as possible. Not that we weren't, we're extremely privileged people, but that's my duty."
Throughout the process, Tiger has been critical of those who left for LIV Golf. He recently became a player director for the PGA Tour but said at the Genesis Invitational that the Tour is trying to figure out how LIV golfers would return to play the Tour, something Rahm said he is interested in doing (along with playing the DP World Tour).
"We're looking into all the different models for pathways back," said Woods. "What that looks like, what the impact is for the players who have stayed and who have not left and how we make our product better going forward, there is no answer to that right now. We're looking at ... varying degrees of ideas and what that looks like in the short term, we don't know. We don't even know in the longer term what that looks like. Trust me, there's daily, weekly emails and talks about this and what this looks like for our tour going forward."
Rahm and Woods are two of the last five winners of the Masters and two of just 18 golfers to win both the Masters and U.S. Open.
