Last week, a report emerged that a handful of PGA Tour players huddled at the FedEx St. Jude Championship to watch a live stream of the court case in which three LIV Golf players were trying to gain entrance into the playoffs.
Jon Rahm was among those players mentioned and on Tuesday at the BMW Championship, he explained how things played out.
“Well, I can tell you I had zero attention on it. I only found out that it was going on because I walked by player dining and I saw about 10 really nervous people pacing all around the room and I thought, well, there's something going on,” Rahm said. “I asked and heard what was going on. But I never really – I was in the room when the judge made her decision known, but only because I was walking by and they told me it was time. So I was like, yeah, I'll stay.”
Judge Beth Labson Freeman in the U.S. District Court Northern District of California ruled that Talor Gooch, Matt Jones and Hudson Swafford – all suspended by the PGA Tour for playing LIV Golf events – could not compete in the FedExCup Playoffs.
Had the three players been granted a temporary restraining order, they would have teed it up in Memphis. Rahm said he would have accepted the judge’s ruling, either way, but the decision worked in favor of those already in the field.
“I think it could have made things a little bit awkward, yeah,” he said. “They chose to leave the PGA Tour, they chose to go join another tour knowing the consequences; and then try to come back and get, you know, courts and justice in the way wouldn't have, I would say, sit extremely well with me.”
The seven-time Tour winner and current world No. 5 added that he doesn’t think LIV Golf will be going away any time soon. And as the legal proceedings draw out, he’s doing his due diligence – in his own, entertaining way.
“It's not the last thing we are going to hear from them, but I don't know,” he said. “I just started watching the show ‘Suits,’ so I'm kind of learning now about what happens in a courtroom.”