Despite all the background noise about the short and long-term future of LIV Golf, the league’s event in Mexico City went ahead as scheduled, with Jon Rahm bouncing back from his poor performance at the Masters with a dominant six-shot victory at at Club de Golf Chapultepec.
Rahm, who has risen to world no.20 with his win, fired a final round seven-under 64 to finish a distance ahead of nearest challenger David Puig.
It’s the most decisive of the spaniard’s four individual wins since joining LIV Golf prior to the 2024 season – and it also helped make him the league’s winningest player across all competitions. With his Legion XIII team also claiming the team trophy Sunday by nine shots, Rahm has now celebrated 16 different LIV Golf trophies, putting him one ahead of Crushers GC’s Bryson DeChambeau, despite playing two fewer seasons.
“A little bit of disbelief,” said Rahm, who finished at 21 under just a week after a disappointing tie for 38th at the Masters. “If you would have told me last week on Thursday afternoon that I’d be winning by a six-shot margin this week, I would not have believed you because of how bad I played. Hell of an effort, and just what a Sunday.”
Entering the day with a two-stroke lead, Rahm opened with a par, then drove the 318-yard par-4 second, where he two-putted from 66 feet for birdie. He followed by driving the green again, this time at the 390-yard par-4 third, his brilliant tee shot finishing inside 3 feet for eagle. Birdie putts from 14 feet and 20 feet on the next two holes extended his lead to six shots.
Meanwhile, his Legion XIII teammate Tyrrell Hatton, who started the day just two shots behind and playing in the final group with Rahm, suffered a double bogey at the drivable second hole and never really recovered, shooting a a 72 and finished in a tie for fifth.
Puig, however, kept the heat on with his own hot start that included birdies in three of his first four holes as well as an eagle at the par-5 seventh. When Puig birdied the 10th, Rahm’s lead was down to three.
But Rahm followed a key par save at the 10th with a birdie at the par-5 12th, while Puig bogeyed the par-4 13th and 15th holes. That gave Rahm ample breathing room down the stretch, allowing him the opportunity to enjoy the walk from tee to green at the par-3 18th, with fans reaching out to congratulate him on the well-received victory.
“That putt on the 10th hole was massive,” Rahm said. “It’s just a moment that the scorecard doesn’t show. That six-shot lead could have been three fast and maybe one or two coming down the stretch.”
Meanwhile, Legion XIII was never really threatened in the team event, even if their LIV Golf-record 19-shot lead through 36 holes was reduced in half by the surging Fireballs. The team victory is the ninth in the regular season for Legion XIII, tying them with the Crushers for most of any team.
Legion XIII entered the final round with a chance to sweep the individual podium, with Rahm, Hatton and Tom McKibbin starting in the top three. As it turned out, Rahm shared the podium with his fellow Spaniards Puig and Josele Ballester of Fireballs.
FUTURE COMMITTMENTS
The tournament ended with LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil committing LIV Golf to returning to Mexico next year despite no public assurances being offered by the Saudi PIF that LIV Golf will be funded after the end of this current season.
O’Neil sent an email to LIV Golf staff on Wednesday last week saying that the league would continue “full throttle” in 2026 without mentioning any plans for the future.
He wrote: “The life of a startup movement is often defined by these moments of pressure. We signed up for this because we believe in disrupting the status quo. We have faced headwinds since the jump, and we’ve answered every time with resilience and grace. Now, we answer by doing what we do best: putting on the most compelling show in sports.”
However, while speaking to a LIV Golf reporter live on camera on Thursday – in an interview clip that was subsequently taken down – O’Neil said: “The reality is you’re funded through the season, and then you work like crazy as a business to create a business and a business plan to keep us going. But that’s not different from any other private equity-funded business in the history of mankind.”
Last week saw the PIF release details of its new five-year investment strategy report, which contained no mention of LIV Golf or any reference to sport. Instead, the report said that the Kingsdom’s focus will be on the domestic economy to diversify Saudi Arabia’s reliance on oil.
The PIF said it planned to transition from “a period of rapid growth and acceleration to a new phase of sustained value creation, with a strengthened focus on maximising impact, raising the efficiency of investments, and applying the highest standards of governance, transparency and institutional excellence.”
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