For someone with a pair of T-2s and four more inside the top 10 finishes at majors since he put on the green jacket in April 2023, Jon Rahm faces a lot of questions about what he hasn’t been able to accomplish on golf’s biggest stages.
There’s surely been some bad and ugly to offset the good: Rahm’s missed the cut twice in the 14 majors he’s played in since his Masters win, and has finished outside the top 30 five times over that same stretch. Translation: Half of his recent major starts weren’t up to standard.
But who’s to blame for the highs and lows? Was it LIV’s lack of a competitive environment? Rahm told reporters in Dubai ahead of this week’s DP World Tour Championship they didn’t look any further than at the man sitting at the podium.
“We’ve got to stop blaming LIV for me playing poorly at the majors,” said Rahm, who won in his first post-LIV start in Abu Dhabi for his first triumph on the DPWT since 2022. “I know what you are all trying to insinuate. It’s not because of LIV. It’s my own. Because I did have a chance to win the PGA the last two years we played it, right? It’s my own doing and my own.”
Rahm’s major highlights between 2023 and 2026 — other than the win at Augusta — include a T-2 at Royal Liverpool four years ago and a T-2 at Aronimink this year. He also managed a T-8 finish at Quail Hollow at the 2025 PGA Championship.
His lowlights include failing to make it to the weekend at Valhalla in 2024 and missing the cut at Shinnecock earlier this year.
As easy as it to say that signing with LIV late in 2023 limited Rahm’s major performance, the numbers don’t exactly line up to tell that story.
In the four years leading up to his LIV exodus — between 2019 and 2022, Rahm finished inside the top 10 just as many times (6) as he has over the last four.
And in 2022 — the year prior to inking his LIV deal, his best major finish came at the U.S. Open where he was T-12. He placed outside the top 25 at the three other major tournaments.
While he hasn’t found the winner’s circle since departing LIV, Rahm has hardly embarrassed himself in his past 14 major starts.
That can remain true and not challenge the connectivity between Rahm’s win in Abu Dhabi coming just four days after LIV announced it would be winding down its operations.
For his part, Rahm did acknowledge Sunday that “everything that’s gone on” with LIV led to “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,” he added
Rahm didn’t give himself much of a chance to win last week and now enters the DPWT’s finale with an outside possibility of claiming his second Race to Dubai crown.
He was quick to shift the blame onto himself for the recent performance at majors, and through that humbling process offered an explanation for the batch of poor results.
“I’ve played really good golf this year, it’s just that unfortunately some of my not-so-good weeks happen to be in the majors,” he said earlier in his press conference Tuesday. “Besides the PGA where I had a decent chance of winning, the other three majors, I didn’t do a good enough job. Overall really good, but those tournaments matter so much to all of us that, you know, kicking myself a little bit over that. ...
“It’s easier at regular events to maybe compensate for some things that we’re doing wrong technique-wise,” he added. “And when the pressure is at its biggest and the stage is the largest is when those mistakes will be accentuated and that’s a little bit what happened.”
