With Jon Rahm joining LIV Golf for a reported $550m plus, European legend Thomas Bjørn believes you can never blame players for the “silly money involved in the game” currently.
Rahm, who will have his own team on the breakaway circuit, joins several other Major winners at LIV, including Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith and Phil Mickelson, who were all reported to have earned north of $100m when defecting from the PGA Tour.
I spoke to Bjørn a couple of days ago at the MCB Tour Championship – Mauritius, and put the rumoured number of Rahm’s singing fee too him and asked whether he thought players were losing touch with reality.
“Well, it is silly money, but you can never blame the players,” said Bjørn, who won last year’s MCB Tour Championship – Mauritius.
“It’s not the players that are offering the money. It’s not the players that are driving this. This has been driven from some somewhere else. And that’s where professional sports, not just golf, has gone over a long period of time.
“So, I don’t think the players have lost sight. The players are reacting to the environment that’s there, and then they try and make their way with that. And for me, that’s not really, where the problem lies.
“I just think that you’ve got to try and create something that’s sustainable. When you have a professional sport, your competitors are other professional sports, but golf seems to be that our competitors are within the sport. – I don’t think that that’s sustainable.
“I don’t think that that has a future in the game. I think we’ve got to find a way where we bring the professional game together and it becomes a worldwide sport. It becomes a worldwide successful sport. I think it’s one of the very few sports that really actually touches every corner of the world as well.
“I think we lost sight of that. I do think we lost sight of that. I do think it’s a bigger worldwide sport, than it’s given credit for. The tours don’t create enough focus on it being a worldwide sport, but that’s always been like that in all the time I’ve played.
“I remember growing up always feeling the South African Open, the Australian Open, the Japan Open, you know, there were great big events and, they’re still great events, but they don’t get the credit that they deserve in the world schedule.
“Playing those events have been some of my most enjoyable memories. To go to these places and play golf on some great golf courses against great players with a great tradition and history. And when those tournaments don’t get that credit and that recognition anymore, I find that it a shame. We’ve created a world where it’s a little bit too simplified.”
