"Keep dreaming" - Fans react to Jon Rahm's LIV Golf 'world tour' format taking inspiration from Formula 1
Jon Rahm participated as a guest on the most recent edition of the Chipping Forecast podcast, in which he spoke about his experience at LIV Golf and the current state of men's professional golf. As part of his remarks, Rahm supported the idea of the emergence of a "World Tour" similar to how Formula 1 works.
Although Jon Rahm is not the first star to speak on the subject, his words have generated much debate on social networks. Fans have expressed a wide variety of opinions, both for and against the idea.
"These LIV guys dream of being like F1 or Premier League superstars. Keep dreaming," said an X user (formerly Twitter).
"So essentially a a tour that would play 72 holes and a cut, then adding the F1 aspect a tour that starts in Feb and ends in Dec and the best players would good get paid based on performance…where have we seen this model before???" posted another X user.
Let's see other opinions posted on X:
"Maybe people don't want golf to be like F1... the problem is that the golfers actually think they know what the fans want. But they don't have a clue what the fans want," a fan said.
"This is simply not a good take. Golf does not need to copy the F1 model. It needs to copy the NBA model," another fan posted.
"A step in the right direction in my opinion. Liv also needs to get rid of a lot wishy washy players that are just after a payday. Other than money there's no incentive to want to win...," a user wrote.
"I don’t get the hang up over 54 vs 72 holes. It really doesn’t impact the viewing experience. It’s not an impediment to LIV receiving OWGR points. It won’t win over critics. It doesn’t enter my consciousness when I’m watching LIV or PGAT whether it’s a 54 or 72 hole tournament," was the opinion of this fan.
What did Jon Rahm say?
Jon Rahm is of the opinion that men's professional golf should follow a format similar to Formula 1. In fact, in his opinion, the LIV Golf circuit has followed that path in several ways. This is how Rahm put it (via Flushing It):
"We need to follow the F1 model. I've told both tours. In fact a lot of things LIV have done has been based on Formula 1, so I would be really happy to do that."
Other players, such as Rory McIlroy, have expressed the same view as Jon Rahm, in one way or another. The general idea is that a "world" circuit would emerge that the best players in the world would qualify for, regardless of which tour they played on.
Formula 1 works as a series of competitions in different parts of the world. Each competition awards points and the winner of the season is decided at the end of the series of races.