Legacy in sport is always complex. Because, as fans, we’re pretty good at having selective memories. It’s just the way it works. We compartmentalise the different aspects of our favourite athletes’ personalities and personal lives, and just keep them locked away in a box for the sake of our enjoyment in watching them compete. And the bigger the overall star? Or the more successful they are? The more leeway we’re willing to give them – the box we use to store those pesky human flaws gets a little more in the way of give to it.
Yet, for as much as we’re willing to ignore, there is still a sliding scale in terms of what exactly sees us turn the other cheek; an all-judging scale upon which the performances of an athlete are weighed up against whatever moral transgression saw them brought before the court of public opinion in the first place. And whilst the rulings tend to differ based on who exactly is on trial and what they’ve done, the one common offence that will always see an athlete end up on the wrong side of the gavel is greed.
Because we all know that professional athletes who compete at the very pinnacle of their sport earn a ridiculous amount of money. It’s just one of those bitter pills you have to swallow when you see a soccer player getting a new contract that sees him getting paid the price of a three-bed semi-detached per week. The trade-off for continuing to willfully ignore the exorbitant amount of money these athletes earn, however, is that they can never be seen to be greedy. It just doesn’t fly. It breaks the illusion. And if that happens, all bets are off. If they don’t uphold their end of the bargain, we won’t either. And that will be the case no matter who you are. All of the things you might’ve accomplished? The core memories you helped create inside living rooms or crowded pubs? That idea of your legacy? It very quickly counts for nothing.
And, right now, that’s the situation facing Jon Rahm.
After the DP World Tour announced last Saturday that they had reached an agreement with eight players who had defected to the LIV Tour, one that sees them granted conditional releases to play with the Saudi outfit whilst still maintaining both their membership of the Tour and eligibility to play in the Ryder Cup, the Spaniard’s name was noticeably missing from that list. According to Joel Beall’s article for ‘Golf Digest’, aside from balking at the requirement to play more DP World Tour events, one of the main sticking points for Rahm in this whole arrangement is having to pay the Tour the total sum of what fines he has accrued since leaving for LIV – an amount that, going on what we can glean from various sources, stands between $2-$3 million.
Now, as far as we’re aware, LIV have been covering some – if not all – of these fines for the last couple of years, but that’s besides the point. What actually matters about this story is the fact that Jon Rahm, someone who reportedly signed a $300 million contract with LIV, is quibbling over needing to spend a mere hundredth of that total in order to play in the Ryder Cup. And whilst the prospect of Team Europe going into Adare without the Spanish talisman is, of course, one the Ryder Cup chiefs would rather avoid, if Rahm wants to hold his services hostage in an attempt to force both them and the DP World Tour into letting him do whatever he wants, I’d be inclined to let him kick rocks.
There’s no denying that Europe are all the stronger for having Jon Rahm on the Ryder Cup team. He’s a Major winner. A former World Number One. And, most saliently of all, of the four Ryder Cups he’s been a part of, he’s been on the winning side three times, amassing 11.5 points in the process. He’s one of the stalwarts of Team Europe. A certified linchpin who has been a cornerstone of the side’s recent success. In short, up until Saturday, Jon Rahm’s Ryder Cup legacy was assured. But, as we’ve discussed, no legacy is ever fully safe.
And, make no mistake about it, this story will already have rankled European fans. How could it not have? The Ryder Cup is supposed to mean more to us on this side of the Atlantic. It’s been the entire foundation upon which we’ve built the success that we’ve had. Where the Americans have long been accused of having too many egos and too much self-interest to ever properly come together as a singular unit, the Europeans have prided themselves on being the ultimate team. So, to now hear Jon, seemingly, being more concerned with money than everything the Ryder Cup has come to represent over here? Let alone his own teammates? It might seem a touch dramatic, but it does feel like a betrayal.
Naturally, as can happen, there’s every possibility that Jon will have a change of heart and yield to the DP World Tour’s more-than-reasonable requests, thus securing his eligibility to make the trip to Limerick in 2027. But, as we know, money can do strange things to people. It always has. And whilst there’s pretty much nothing in this world that money can’t buy, there is no price you can put on the legacy that Jon Rahm has created in the Ryder Cup, nor the relationship that has been built between him and the fans off the back of those efforts.
But if none of that means as much to Jon as we might have thought, then, in my opinion, both the DP World Tour and Ryder Cup Europe should absolutely hold their ground. Because if money means more to Jon Rahm than the legacy he’s built in the theatre that is the Ryder Cup? Fine. Because the Ryder Cup has never been about ‘the one’, it has always been about ‘the twelve’. And if Jon has forgotten that, I guarantee you that there’s an endless list of guys just chomping at the bit to get a shot at forging their very own Ryder Cup legacy.
Because in the context of the Ryder Cup, nobody is indispensable, nor can they be.
But everyone is inherently forgettable.
