Jon Rahm claimed victory over Tyrrell Hatton and Rory McIlroy on his first start since quitting LIV Golf.
A few weeks ago, Jon Rahm’s mind was elsewhere. He left the BMW PGA Championship having finished dead last, his pre-occupied by the impending arrival of his fourth child and – to a lesser extent – his exit from LIV Golf.
But in his first start since that ignominious visit to Wentworth and having left the doomed breakaway league with millions of dollars on the table, Rahm is a winner again. On debut here at the Abu Dhabi Aldar Championship, Rahm held off Ryder Cup teammates Tyrrell Hatton and Rory McIlroy to win by two strokes with an imperious final round 67 at Yas Links.
His expectations were on the floor on Thursday morning, but Rahm secured his first win on the DP World Tour in four years and his sixth Rolex Series event with a stellar week of approach play.
“From last to first is a pretty good feeling,” he told reporters here in Abu Dhabi. A fresh start, indeed.
“After everything that’s gone on, and some poor play and some battles mentally with a lot of noise, to come back out after a bit of rest and being with the family, it’s quite special,” Rahm added.
That noise, of course, has been inescapable ever since Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund withdrew its funding from LIV in April and Rahm’s competitive future was thrown into doubt. The fervor around LIV’s collapse also coincided with Rahm’s concerns about his wife Kelley’s fourth pregnancy. For the first time since leaving the league in bankruptcy court, Rahm opened up on the toll the last few months has taken on him.
“Whether you like to admit it or not, it was a lot of extra noise going on in general, and that was still not the most important part of my life,” he said. “In the sense of the impending birth of our daughter was something that was weighing heavily on me at Wentworth, I’m not going to lie, I didn’t want to miss it.
“It was a little bit more difficult to perhaps play and think throughout the golf course [when] it felt a little bit cloudy in a sense.”
Settled after the birth of his daughter last month, Rahm was completely at ease at Yas Links. “I felt incredibly calm, even when things didn’t go anyway,” he added. “Not much seemed to bother me, and probably the main reason why I was able to perform the way I have.”
He was asked the last time he played a tournament with the absence of such noise.
“It’s just been more of a recent development perhaps starting in April,” the 31-year-old admitted. “Before that, I’ve been clear-minded many times.[The PGA Championship] was a great week as well. Too bad I fell short but Aaron [Rai] played fantastic down the stretch. That’s the one that I can remember.”
Rahm said at the start of the week that he “seriously doubts” he will be offered a pathway back to the PGA Tour as generous as the one taken by Brooks Koepka. But his return to the European game in 2027 is a huge boost for the DP World Tour and indeed Luke Donald, who will surely not need to waste a pick on Rahm at next year’s Ryder Cup.
A more surprising upshot of this win, though, is that Rahm could also now take the Race to Dubai. The weighting of the points in these playoff events means that if he goes back-to-back on the Earth Course next week, leader Eugenio Chacarra would need to finish eighth and McIlroy would need to be runner-up to stop Rahm winning his second order of merit title in Europe.
“It’s on to the next page, right?” Rahm added. “Luckily in golf, I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of opportunities and take advantage of them, and hopefully I can keep doing so.”