Golf indulging LIV rebels with Ryder Cup carrot leaves sour taste

Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton helped Europe dominate Team USA at Marco Simone Golf Club – Getty Images/Ross Kinnaird

“That’s it, mate.” You had to admire the succinctness with which Sir Nick Faldo framed one of golf’s most intractable conundrums. Asked once whether Europe’s LIV rebels should ever represent the continent at a Ryder Cup again, the veteran of 11 such contests replied: “The bottom line is they knew what they were doing. They wanted to take the money and run. That’s it, they are done. You couldn’t leave your company, go off and work for a rival, then two years later say, ‘Oh well, I’ll come back.’”

Except this is precisely the proposal as we approach the second anniversary of LIV’s pestilence upon the game. The original defectors might have burned their bridges, with Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood and Sergio Garcia all relinquishing their DP World Tour membership, but a path back is already being smoothed for the duo who followed in their wake. Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton, who between them have amassed an estimated £500 million for forsaking the tour, learn they are still eligible for next year’s Ryder Cup so long as they tee it up in at least four events and settle up a £1 million fine that is little more than loose change.

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The loophole leaves the sourest taste. Forget the question of whether these two will be even remotely match-tough enough for Bethpage Black after 17 more months of larking around in zero-jeopardy knockabouts in their Bermuda shorts. Consider instead the message that their reprieve sends. Rahm and Hatton are participating in a project that continues to inflict immense damage on professional golf, weakening governing bodies, driving down TV ratings and uniting fans only in disgust at the preposterous sums involved. And the punishment for their selfishness is – well, what, exactly? To be welcomed back into the fold at the Ryder Cup, an event that serves as the ultimate shop window for the main tours? It is as absurd as it is dispiriting.

On all sides, golf seems to have shelved the notion of holding steadfast principles. Take Rory McIlroy, for example. For the best part of two years, he was a rare voice of conscience, until he developed the unfortunate politician’s habit of twisting in the wind. Wasting few chances to excoriate the LIV set, he was adamant that they should be kept away from the Ryder Cup, even revelling in their exile in Rome when he declared: “They are going to miss here more than we’re missing them.”

What transformed his thinking was Rahm’s dramatic switch two months later. The absence of Poulter, Westwood et al could be passed off as a tolerable cost of golf’s great schism, given their ages, even if it would deprive Europe of several future captains. But the Spaniard’s omission threatened to cut the team to the bone. Here was a Masters champion and former world No 1, not to mention a talismanic performer at Marco Simone. A force, in other words, Europe could ill afford to do without. And so, just as suddenly as McIlroy had become the anti-LIV spokesman, he softened his stance, urging rapprochement.

“Jon is going to be in Bethpage in 2025,” he declared, somewhat presumptuously, last December. “The tour is going to have to rewrite the rules for Ryder Cup eligibility, there is no question about that. I certainly want Jon on the next team.”

There was a sense of McIlroy presenting this as a fait accompli, as if the tour would naturally pivot to a policy of “whatever Rory wants, Rory gets”. In the end, a rewrite was avoided, with the return of Rahm and Hatton confirmed as permissible under the existing rules.

What a ghastly fudge it all is, though. Look at this way: every time that Rahm competes under the LIV banner, he incurs a suspension from the following DP World Tour event. But it is a sanction without sufficient teeth. He can crowbar in four token appearances later in the season and pay the seven-figure fine without batting an eyelid. It makes a mockery of the system that a man who has enriched himself beyond measure by turning his back on the tour can waltz back in on a technicality. Faldo is right when he argues that golf needs to draw the line somewhere. Sadly, it lacks the gumption to do so.

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