Golf Channel utterly embarrassed itself last week at the PGA Championship with its continued attacks on LIV Golf players.
This time the target was Jon Rahm, the 2023 Masters winner, who was beloved by the same Golf Channel talking heads… right up until he signed with LIV Golf.
Ahead of the PGA Championship, during a press conference, the LIV Golf star was asked about Jimmy Dunne stepping down from his position on the PGA Tour policy board.
Dunne was reportedly the main conduit between the PGA Tour and PIF (LIV), and with his exit, the hope for unification seemed to have been downgraded.
The reporter qualified his question by seeking a reaction about Dunne “from the other side.”
Rahm was not happy with the qualifier.
“See you guys keep saying ‘the other side’ but I’m still a PGA Tour member, whether suspended or not,” said Rahm, a two-time major winner.
“I still want to support the PGA Tour. And I think that’s an important distinction to make. I don’t feel like I’m on the other side. I’m just not playing there.”
Immediately following the Spaniard’s press conference, the panel on “Live From” at the PGA Championship ripped into Rahm for having the temerity to seek a “distinction.”
Eamon Lynch, the network’s cancerous leftwing smear merchant, called Rahm an “arsonist” and “stooge” for having the audacity to seek unification with the PGA Tour.
“It’s not often you hear the arsonists give advice to the firefighters on how to extinguish the blaze and start asking when he can move back into the house,” said Lynch, insinuating the division was caused by LIV golfers, despite the PGA Tour being the party who suspended the players.
As Michael McEwan wrote in Bunkered, back in December 2023: Firstly, Rahm is not “turning his back on the PGA Tour”. He has already expressed a desire to maintain his membership of it and the DP World Tour. The only thing currently preventing him from continuing his PGA Tour career is, in fact, the PGA Tour, which (if convention holds) will now suspend him indefinitely. So, who’s turning its back on who?
Lynch continued, “If he wanted to support the PGA Tour and present himself as a loyal member as he does, well then don’t be a stooge of the Saudis. Don’t sign up to be a willing leverage point as they attempt to upend or diminish the product that you’re claiming loyalty to.”
(This is how it works: if you’re like Phil Mickelson and you criticize the PGA Tour on the way out, you’re smeared as a “bridge burner.” And if you’re like Rahm who seeks to build bridges, you’re a “hypocrite.”)
The PGA Tour suspended Jon Rahm, who left for LIV Golf, back in December.
On Tuesday, Rahm addressed the media at the 2024 PGA Championship, dispelled the idea that he's "on the other side," and claimed he's both still a member and still wants to support the PGA Tour.… pic.twitter.com/YOHQvM7vQt
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) May 14, 2024
Aaron Oberholser, the one-time PGA Tour winner with a four-time major champion ego, outdid Lynch and suggested (on live TV) that he’d like to assault Rahm.
“He doesn’t get it,” said Oberholser. “To this day, he doesn’t get it. And this is a guy who wanted a position or wanted to be heard, from what I understand.
“Either a board position, policy board. He wanted to be heard on this whole thing before he went to LIV. And I feel like he wasn’t as heard as much as he probably should have been.
“And now I’m glad he wasn’t in that position because he doesn’t get it. As a PGA Tour player and as a PGA Tour member — still, a card-carrying PGA Tour member — and someone who supports the PGA Tour, not happy with what’s going on right now, obviously, but supports the PGA tour.
“I’m incensed by that, quite honestly.
“By the level of, to your point, of naivete that you don’t get it. You still don’t get it. You took 500 large, and then you’re going to sit there and tell me, oh, you still feel like a PGA Tour member. I want to support the PGA tour and I want the peak — I mean, I want to I want to wring his neck through the television. I’m that mad, right now. I’m that mad.
“I mean— and every player in that locker room right now, if they watch that — on the PGA Tour — should be absolutely incensed with him.”
The media pile on wasn’t over: former LPGA player Paige Mackenzie oddly contrasted Rahm’s conciliatory tone to that of Phil Mickelson, who was critical of the PGA Tour.
“You have what Jon Rahm said, which is effectively, if I’m reading between the lines, is ‘I went over there to help them mend the fences somehow,’” said Mackenzie, who in over 120 starts on LPGA produced just two career top-10 finishes.
“I can’t make that make sense on the move to leave. And somehow that’s going to bring everything together.”
Yet, if you look back when Rahm’s LIV signing was announced, many in the media predicted exactly what they’re mocking him for now.
The Guardian: Jon Rahm’s defection to LIV will spur PGA Tour to seal deal with Saudis
Sports Illustrated: The Best Thing for the Tour To Do Is Make This Deal’: Brandel Chamblee Says Pro Golf Needs Unity After Rahm Defection
Bottomline: another major ruined by the corrupt golf media’s vicious hatred of LIV Golf.
