The elaborate dance to manoeuvre Jon Rahm on to Europe’s team for the Ryder Cup has been going on for a long time, and it will end with all parties locked in an expedient embrace. It doesn’t matter what he did, or what he said, or what he stands for, or what it might mean once the Ryder Cup is over: Team Europe will not countenance arriving in Bethpage next month without the poster boy for the biggest sportswashing project in history.
For the match in Rome, two years ago, it was much easier for Team Europe to take what might have seemed like a principled stance. Nobody on the European side cared about the former Ryder Cup players who had defected to LIV Golf and, in the process, disqualified themselves from selection. Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter, Sergio Garcia, Graeme McDowell and others were all beaten dockets at that level of the game.
But once Rahm jumped the fence at the end of 2023, followed a couple of months later by Tyrrell Hatton, there was a back-channel stampede to keep the door open.
The problem for Team Europe was that Rahm was stubborn and insanely rich and answering to a different paymaster. The DP World Tour had rules around eligibility that they weren’t prepared to compromise, and Rahm couldn’t care less about their rules.
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In September of last year, though, Rahm agreed to join the dance that would get him to Bethpage; not to conform or abide by the rules but to move to the music. Nobody can be considered for the Ryder Cup on the European side unless they are a member of the DP World Tour. The criterion for membership is to participate in a minimum of four DP World Tour events, outside of the Majors.
Rahm’s original position was obstinance. The noises from his camp were that he had no plans to turn up at four events. The overriding issue was the fines and suspensions. Some of the early defectors to LIV wanted the option of playing on the DP World Tour during the frequent breaks in LIV’s schedule, while also being free to play a LIV event – with impunity – in the case of a scheduling clash.
This dispute ended up in the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which ruled in favour of the DP World Tour. Any player who wanted to maintain their membership of the DP World Tour would need permission to play in clashing events on the LIV schedule. Failure to secure that permission would lead to fines and suspensions.
Lodging an appeal, though, would pause the process. In August of last year, Hatton consented to play the game. Rahm made them sweat until just before entries closed for the Spanish Open. He also made it clear that he wasn’t backing down. In a letter sent by his agent to Guy Kinnings, the chief executive of the DP World Tour, Rahm said he had “no intention of paying any fines”.
Once Rahm and Hatton had entered the system, though, the appeals process was never going to be expedited. Nearly a year later, no hearing has been arranged, and none is planned before the Ryder Cup.
“The lawyers involved will dictate the legal process as to when it gets done,” said Kinnings last September. Rahm and Hatton have no chance of winning their appeals and that outcome would have excluded them from the Ryder Cup. Speed was not in anyone’s interests.
It is now more than two years since the PGA Tour and LIV Golf announced a “framework” arrangement, to restore some kind of unity to a splintered game. There is no sign of a resolution. LIV Golf events are still not included in the world rankings system, even though more LIV players have been filtering back into the Majors: 12 at the Masters this year, 15 at the US PGA, 14 at the US Open and 19 at The Open at Royal Portrush, the highest number since LIV started.
The presence of LIV players at the Majors is the kind of normalisation that sportswashing sets out to achieve. The general outrage about Saudi Arabia holding the game to ransom has dissipated. On the sports pages at least, the furious stories about human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, its treatment of women, the LGBT+ community and migrant workers, have disappeared. At Newcastle United press conferences, Eddie Howe is no longer asked questions about Saudi Arabia.
Sportswashing is a long game. Saudi Arabia has the resources to wear out everyone’s anger. In the space of three days last week, 17 people were executed in Saudi Arabia, most of them for drugs offences. That takes the total this year to 239. At that rate they are on course to outstrip last year’s total of 338, which was the highest tally since the early 1990s, according to AFP and France 24.
Rahm, Hatton and all the others made an open-eyed deal with a sportswashing project designed, in some way, to launder the reputation of that regime.
According to the Telegraph, LIV have been paying the fines of players on their tour who still want to compete in DP World Tour events. So far, that has amounted to more than €17 million. If, as expected, Rahm, Hatton and Adrian Meronk are unsuccessful in their appeals, their fines are estimated to reach €10 million.
As McDowell pointed out at The Open, however, LIV have told their players that they will stop paying fines on December 31st. Does that mean Rahm and Hatton will stump up in the future to protect their DP World Tour membership and their eligibility for the Ryder Cup?
Rahm says he won’t pay a fine. He also said he wouldn’t join LIV.
“The system is being twisted to the point where they can figure out how to get them on the team,” said McDowell. “There’s a certain element of hypocrisy about it.”
The PGA Tour, and by extension the DP World Tour, will eventually arrive at a deal with LIV that will be unpalatable to everyone who regards Saudi Arabia’s involvement in sport as repulsive. In the meantime, the Ryder Cup, at least on the European side, had an opportunity to rise above the venality of golf’s grubby power game and LIV’s black heart.
That opportunity has been wilfully spurned. To win the Ryder Cup with Rahm and Hatton on the team would be worthless.
