Rahm Extends Brutal Start to 2026 for LIV Golf Haters

If you were to draw up the nightmare start to the 2026 LIV Golf League season for its legacy golf media and social media trolls, you couldn't have imagined it would be this bad for them.

At the opener in Riyadh, 23-year-old LIV rookie, who signed in the offseason with Ripper GC, Elvis Smylie burst onto the scene with a debut victory, putting to bed the "horrible offseason" narrative. Smylie's win also squashed the anti-team golf bots by highlighting his relationship with captain Cam Smith, as a major factor in both his decision to join the League and his instantaneous success:

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"Yeah, it's awesome. I got awarded the scholarship back in 2019 where I got to go and spend a week with him (Cam Smith) in Jax where he lives and just seeing what life is like being one of the best golfers in the world, and we've kept in touch the last couple years, and we've been paired together a lot of times. He's world-class at what he does, and I feel like I have so much to learn from him, and I feel like I'm only going to get better and better."

Then, at LIV Golf's signature event at Adelaide, the oft-maligned Anthony Kim capped off a sports comeback that Hollywood producers would write off as a "fairytale." Surging on the final day, and encapsulating the drama of sport, to defeat Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau. It was the stuff of legends. Kim capped it all off by leaving the world with a poignant message:

"Don't fucking quit. That's it. Don't fucking quit."

And on Sunday in Hong Kong, after the water-carrying media and fellow Ryder Cup star Rory McIlroy shilled for the establishment and its unfairly targeted DP World Tour fines levied against Jon Rahm, the same week Rahm chartered a private plane to help league mates stranded in the Middle East escape, Rahmbo reaffirmed his status as one of the best talents in the entire sport. He methodically picked apart the historic Hong Kong Golf Club en route to a resounding victory.

Rahm stood on principle by declining to cave to the DP World Tour's extortion, walked the talk of his values when he arranged the exodus of his competitors from a dangerous location in the Middle East, and ran away with the 2026 HSBC LIV Golf Hong Kong Championship. He reminded LIV haters that being a good human is more important than being a good golfer, always:

"I was raised with a value of, if you have the ability and the capability of helping somebody in need, you go and help them. It was never about karma. It was simply about luckily getting those boys out of a dangerous situation. Like I said earlier, sometimes it wasn't even about golf. At one point I was thinking about almost reaching out to a contact in Spain to get Tom and Caleb somewhere to practice in Spain, not even thinking about coming here, just out of Dubai; go practice somewhere. That was priority number one. The fact that my GM and agent, Jeff Koski, was able to pull a rabbit out of the hat and VistaJet, as well, were able to get a crew and a plane to Oman and somebody brave enough to go land picked them up and took them all the way here, the credit goes to those two pilots, the stewardess, VistaJets and Jeff. All I did is maybe have the vision to push them to do it, but they did all the work."

Thoughts and prayers go out to the haters. It's been a start to the season they'd love to forget.

Quotes, data, and photos courtesy LIV Golf