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The post ‘Your feelings do change’: Jon Rahm says LIV decision hinged on 2 factors appeared first on Golf.

So before we go forward, let’s take a step back.

“Money is great, but when [my wife] Kelley and I started talking about it, and we’re like, Will our lifestyle change if I got $400 million? No, it will not change one bit,” Rahm said back in 2022, prior to the U.S. Open, when asked about the possibility of joining LIV Golf. “Truth be told, I could retire right now with what I’ve made and live a very happy life and not play golf again. So I’ve never really played the game of golf for monetary reasons. I play for the love of the game, and I want to play against the best in the world. I’ve always been interested in history and legacy, and right now the PGA Tour has that.”

But a lot can change in 18 months, especially in today’s world of pro golf. Like in December, when something that was long rumored turned out to be true and Rahm officially joined LIV for the 2024 season.

So, what gives?

“I’d say there was two instances,” said Rahm, speaking to GOLF’s Dylan Dethier in the latest episode of “Breakthrough,” which you can watch on YouTube right here. “I think dynamics started to change and there was a lot of division at that time. And yes, for me to want to change, there had to be reasons beyond the money, right? So when I said that [in June 2022] I fully meant it and it was true. Now, when they slap you with a large amount of money in your face, your feelings do change. I try not to be a materialistic person, but I do owe it to my family as well to set them up for success the best I can, and having kids I think changed that quite a bit. So the money is a part of it; I’m not going to lie. But again, when I said that I wasn’t fully aware of what I was saying because you don’t really understand.”

So there’s a different emotion when it’s like, OK, there is a reality here — you could get this massive amount of money?

“Yes.”

Dethier and Rahm sat down at The Biltmore in Coral Gables, Fla., last month, to talk in length about Rahm’s upbringing, other sports he played growing up (canoeing club!), finding his footing in golf, his peculiar college recruitment story, what it was like winning the Masters and more.

In fact, Rahm said his Masters win, coupled with his 2021 U.S. Open victory, was a “big determining factor” in signing with LIV. An Augusta victory means you are invited back for life, and Rahm is exempt into the U.S. Open through at least 2031.

Another factor? The shifting dynamics in golf.

“What opened the door a little bit was that PGA Tour and LIV agreement,” Rahm said. “So when that happened, I was like, well, we are definitely coming together. There is something happening, so at least I owe it to myself to hear what they have to offer and what their vision is. I figured I owed it to myself to hear them out, which is what I did when the season was over.”

Even in the couple of weeks following Rahm’s sitdown with Dethier, the golf world has continued to change. Last week, the Tour announced an investment of up to $3 billion from the Strategic Sports Group. As for an official deal with the Saudi PIF? That’s still on hold.

You catch watch Rahm’s complete “Breakthrough” interview above, or by clicking here.

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The post This was when Smylie Kaufman realized he was meant to be broadcaster appeared first on Golf.

The post This was when Smylie Kaufman realized he was meant to be broadcaster appeared first on Golf.

Pursuing a professional golf career just isn’t in the cards anymore for the 2015 Shriners Hospitals for Children Open winner as he’s now starting his second season roaming the fairways as an on-course reporter for NBC.

But as Kaufman told GOLF senior writer Dylan Dethier in the most recent episode of Breakthrough — you can watch in full here — while he was playing in college at LSU, he never really envisioned himself on the PGA Tour.

“I wasn’t somebody that had that belief in college,” he said. “I just wanted maybe an opportunity to play an event.”

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In his own words, he outdid his expectations when he won in Vegas during just his fifth start on the PGA Tour. More than eight years later, he has no regrets about a playing career that is now largely behind him.

But when the putts stopped falling, he eventually started looking for other work and landed an opportunity to call the PGA Championship at Southern Hills in 2022.

He said that was the first time he felt comfortable and he didn’t have to look over his shoulder.

“I felt my anxiety was lifted,” Kaufman said. “I felt like my personality woke up again.”

But then there was another moment at last fall’s Ryder Cup in Rome when Kaufman really knew he was doing exactly what he was meant to be doing.

“I’m walking down the first fairway and my wife was up there, she came for the week, and it was so cool to see her and then just walk up the fairway and I was literally tearing up and emotional,” said Kaufman, who claimed it was a rare moment of sentiment for him. “I was like, ‘This is exactly where I’m supposed to be.'”

For more from Kaufman, including his mistake in U.S. Open prep, playing in the final pairing on Masters Sunday (and the movie he watched beforehand), the frustrations he dealt with while trying to find his game and more, click on the YouTube link below.

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The post Smylie Kaufman on his first win (and why his grandmother scolded him) appeared first on Golf.

The post Smylie Kaufman on his first win (and why his grandmother scolded him) appeared first on Golf.

Kaufman, aided by a victory on the Web.com Tour’s United Leasing Championship in May 2015, earned his PGA Tour card for the 2015-16 season, which started at the Frys.com Open at Silverado. Kaufman tied for 10th. That was a big boost, as that top 10 helped his priority ranking, meaning he had less pressure on him to perform the following week at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in Las Vegas.

Kaufman told the story of that first PGA Tour victory (which came in just his fifth PGA Tour start) to GOLF senior writer Dylan Dethier in the most recent episode of Breakthrough — you can watch in full here — but that win might not have happened without his grandmother setting him straight.

As Kaufman tells it, it was late in the day early in the tournament when he chunked a chip on the 16th hole. Then came the fire.

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“I was mad, I was stomping,” he said. “I was cussing.”

His grandparents and his girlfriend (now his wife) were the only people watching him at the time.

“My grandmother, I think it was the next day, she came up to me and said, ‘You gotta start acting better,'” Kaufman said. “She would never really say anything to me like that, unless it needed to be said. Her words, when she did speak, they carried a lot of weight.”

Kaufman said he’s not sure if that talk with his grandma changed his outcome at the Shriners, but it is one of his most vivid memories from that week in Vegas. He said he was essentially going through the motions, not playing great but not playing poorly (67-72-68). He was seven off the lead with 18 holes to play.

Kaufman knew it wasn’t realistic that he’d win — “there were a lot of guys [teeing off] behind us,” he joked — but something clicked that Sunday.

“I absolutely striped it,” he said. “Absolutely striped it. I was only one under through seven holes, where I felt like I could have been six or seven under through those holes.”

After a birdie on 8, Kaufman and his caddie were waiting for the green to clear on the par-5 9th. They glanced at the scoreboard and talked about the wind.

“And [my caddie] said, ‘I think we still have something to say about this tournament,'” Kaufman said. “I’m like, ‘I’ll have what you are having.’ [Laughs] Winning wasn’t even on my radar by any means. Then I think the last 11 holes I was nine under or something. Kind of blacked out a little bit.”

Kaufman eagled 15 and said a TV camera showed up when he was in the 16th fairway at TPC Summerlin. That’s when he knew he was on the verge of something special.

“I think most people at that time, if you are a rookie, when the cameras show up you’d be like, ‘Wait, do I have a shot to win this thing?'” he said. “For me, when the cameras showed up I was like, ‘Alright, lights are on. Let’s go. You are built for this.'”

Kaufman’s back-nine 29 was good for a 10-under 61. He then waited around the clubhouse for about two hours to see if his 16-under total would hold up. It did.

For more from Kaufman, including his mistake in U.S. Open prep, playing in the final pairing on Masters Sunday (and the movie he watched beforehand), the frustrations he dealt with while trying to find his game and more, click on the YouTube link below.

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The post ‘I wish somebody would have taken the remote’: Smylie Kaufman’s Masters Sunday regret appeared first on Golf.

The post ‘I wish somebody would have taken the remote’: Smylie Kaufman’s Masters Sunday regret appeared first on Golf.

Kaufman was a first-timer in the field, and fired rounds of 73-72-69 to earn a spot in Sunday’s final pairing, one shot behind third-round leader Jordan Spieth.

But that’s when the fairytale ended for Kaufman. A disastrous final-round 81 dropped him into T29 — and he hasn’t played in a Masters since.

But that’s also not where Kaufman’s PGA Tour story ends. Though his competitive career as a pro has come to a close, last January, Kaufman joined NBC Sports to serve as an on-course reporter for the network’s golf coverage, and earned immediate plaudits for his insight and commentary.

GOLF’s Dylan Dethier was certain there must be more to Kaufman’s story, and made Kaufman the centerpiece of Breakthrough’s second episode.

Dethier caught up with the 32-year-old at the 2023 RSM Open to discuss a myriad of topics, from the story behind Smylie’s unique name to his antics alongside buddies Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler and Jordan Spieth. But it was Kaufman’s reminiscence of his 2016 Masters experience that was particularly compelling.

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“I tell people all the time, if you’re gonna play the Masters once, you might as well have the full experience,” Kaufman said with a laugh. “And well, let me tell you, I had the full freaking experience.”

Kaufman said the week started on a high note, when he was one of several players to make a hole-in-one during that year’s famously electric Par-3 Contest. When the tournament began, windy conditions in the opening rounds played right into his hands. Kaufman said he loved the creativity required to play Augusta National and felt the course was a good fit for his game.

But after a terrific Saturday, the final round loomed. Kaufman said he struggled with what to do with himself while he waited for his late-afternoon tee time, and turned on the TV.

“I was pretty bored that day, to be honest,” he said. “I was looking for anything to do. I turned on the Golf Channel and for whatever reason, they had Tin Cup on. And I’m just kind of a sucker for like, certain movies. If it’s on, I have to watch it. And Tin Cup was one of them.

“I wish somebody would have taken the remote and turned the channel because Tin Cup is what you should not be watching on Sunday if you’re trying to go win the Masters,” Kaufman continued. “So dealing, obviously watching that, that wasn’t helpful.”

For a quick refresher on the movie’s plot: when Kevin Costner’s character, driving-range pro Roy “Tin Cup” McAvoy, has a chance to become an unlikely winner of the U.S. Open, he decides to go for a hero shot over water, trying and failing again and again until he drops his final ball. If that ball doesn’t stay in play, Roy will be disqualified. He ends up holing out with his final ball, losing the U.S. Open but becoming a folk hero in the process.

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Easy to see why this plotline was less than inspiring for Kaufman on that Sunday morning!

Still, Kaufman insisted that he didn’t play as poorly as his score indicated that day.

“I just had some really terrible breaks, and that’s Augusta National,” he said. “Like, when you were like a foot off, it can really mess you up and get in some really terrible spots. “I really felt like I hit it well and I’ve always been a great putter and I just really struggled with my start lines that day. It wasn’t necessarily nerves. I just didn’t see the ball go in the hole and wasn’t able to make the proper adjustments on the greens.”

For more from Kaufman in Breakthrough, check out the second episode in its entirety above or at the YouTube link below.

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The post Smylie Kaufman’s Masters changed him. Just not how you’d expect appeared first on Golf.

The post Smylie Kaufman’s Masters changed him. Just not how you’d expect appeared first on Golf.

It was Sunday at the 2016 Masters and Kaufman, 24 years old at the time, was looking to cap off his meteoric rise to the top of the golfing world. He’d gone from a solid college player to a winning Korn Ferry Tour pro to shooting 61 on Sunday of the Shriners Children’s Open to win in the fall of his rookie year on the PGA Tour. And now, thanks to a round of 69 in brutal Saturday conditions, he’d played his way into the final group at Augusta National alongside his good buddy Jordan Spieth. The golf course suited him. He felt the moment did, too. He might not win the Masters, but this promised to be a career-changing day.

“If I could pick a golf course design to say ‘this suits your game the best,’ it would be Augusta National,” he says. We’re sitting by the range at Sea Island on the eve of this fall’s RSM Classic, in conversation for the second episode of Breakthrough, which you can watch above or on YouTube here. I’m not sure how willing Kaufman — now a popular on-course analyst for NBC Sports — will be to tell the story of his playing career but he lets the words spill out, one story into the next, far enough removed that he’s comfortable sharing, recent enough he can still feel it all.

And he remembers there’s no day in golf quite like Masters Sunday.

“It just takes a while to get to 3 o’clock,” he says, remembering that Sunday. “I was pretty bored that day, to be honest. I was looking for anything to do, I turned on the Golf Channel. And I’m a sucker for certain movies, if it’s on I have to watch it. And Tin Cup is one of them. I wish someone had taken the remote and turned the channel, because Tin Cup is not what you should be watching on Sunday if you want to go win the Masters. So that wasn’t helpful.”

Not a good start. But it’s worth remembering this next part instead.

“I get out there and it’s the first time on the range that I’ve ever had any wrist discomfort,” he says. “I get on the range and I start feeling something in my wrist.”

Kaufman’s trainer took a quick look and told him that he should be good for the day. Kaufman believed him. As he warmed up, the wrist felt better. He doesn’t use that as an excuse for what happened next; he admits it didn’t bother him for the rest of the day. But it turned out to be a harbinger of things to come.

Kaufman’s round got off to a strange start. He stuffed his approach at No. 1 to four feet and missed the putt. He actually birdied the par-5 second. But that was the last good thing to happen for a while. He wasn’t nervous, he insists. He was just a little bit off.

“I learned some things I would have been able to use for the next time,” he says wistfully. “I just had some really terrible breaks. And that’s Augusta National. When you’re like, a foot off, it can really mess you up and get you in some really terrible spots.”

He never got comfortable with the speed of the greens, which he describes as having turned “purple” overnight. Compounding and discomfort was the effect of being paired with Jordan Spieth, whose final-round collapse was far more dramatic and likely commanded more of your attention.

“He was making putts, everybody was moving, and I just could not settle down. I wasn’t able to take that extra deep breath that day,” Kaufman says.

He bogeyed 3 and 4. He bogeyed 7. Then 9. Then 10. Then 11. When they got to No. 12, Spieth hit two balls in the water, giving up the lead en route to a tragic quadruple-bogey 7. But in a dark irony that was Kaufman’s best moment of the day; he stuck his tee shot and fist-pumped in a birdie putt.

Still, that would prove the lone bright spot of the back nine for either buddy. Kaufman bogeyed 13 and then finished double bogey, bogey, bogey for a final-round 81. He plummeted to T29.

It would be understandable if Kaufman had allowed that moment to break him; he’d hardly be the first golfer to get undone by Augusta National. But Kaufman is a tough guy to rattle and insists he left the week optimistic.

“From a mental standpoint I thought I had learned so much, that I would be able to use those experiences for the next time, that I was like, dude, my first Masters I made it to the final group?”

Mostly he was frustrated that he’d let a 76 balloon to an 81, keeping him from automatically qualifying for the next year’s event.

Looking back now, however, the difference between 76 and 81 seems meaningless compared to that little twinge he felt on the range.

A string of missed cuts came in the weeks that followed; three in a row and eight of the next 11. His rookie season was derailed. His reliable ball-striking had gotten shaky. Still, couldn’t put his finger on an explanation until far later.

“Really it was my wrist that was preventing me from doing the things we were trying to do in the golf swing,” he says. He left his longtime coach Tony Ruggiero. He left his next coach, too, and his next coach after that. He was looking for a magic solution. There wasn’t one to be found.

Kaufman’s profile had risen even as his game and health had disappeared. That’s because this timeline coincided with the spring break trip he’d taken with Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas to the Bahamas, where they ushered in a new era of golf-on-social media with a buddies trip that quickly made the rounds. Kaufman had never said he thought he was as good as his travel-mates, but still — the pressure mounted by association. The negativity began to build on itself.

“I would say the physical injuries that I had led to a lot of the mental hurdles that I had,” he says. “And at that same time was kind of the rise of social media in golf … I saw the best and worst of it in such a snapshot of a couple years.”

In 2017 Kaufman’s struggles continued; he nabbed two top 10s but missed 15 of 27 cuts. Then came 2018. He made the cut in his second start of the year, the CareerBuilder Challenge, and finished T69. Then he missed every cut the rest of the season.

“Not only was I trying to play better, I was trying to tackle a golf course where it felt like there was a bear in the woods I felt like was trying to chase me down,” he says. “And I’m over here trying to prove Joe Schmoe wrong that I’m a good player. It just — I think mentally I wasn’t ever really prepared. I’ve never had anybody tell me that I suck.”

He had no good way to deal with the anxiety that had risen to the surface. And he didn’t feel like he could step away and get healthy. When he went home, Kaufman couldn’t get away from the game. When he was at the course he couldn’t get away from a big right miss.

He made just one PGA Tour cut in the years that followed, a 71st-place finish at the 2019 Rocket Mortgage Classic.

He’s tempted to say he has no regrets, given the place he’s ended up. But that isn’t quite true.

“Maybe the only regret would be that I did have injuries and I really did have some serious tendonitis going on,” he says. “It didn’t require surgery but it was a chronic tendonitis in my wrist and then my left elbow. So there was probably moments where I could have taken six to nine months off to really get healthy, and it would have helped me, in that time period, to settle down, press the brakes, almost have a golf retreat with my team to get everybody back on the same page and get me confident again.

“I think it got a little too fast, me trying to fix things.”

There’s a happy ending to this story — one that continues at this week’s Sentry with a microphone in hand. I hope you’ll watch the rest of the interview to hear how that happened next, but I’ll leave you with a serene scene courtesy of Kaufman, this October.

“The end of this year, at the Ryder Cup — I’m not an emotional person, I’m not a cryer,” Kaufman says. “If it’s a sad movie I can’t even tear up.”

“But I’m walking down the first fairway and my wife was up there, she came for the week. It was just so cool to see her and then I was walking up the fairway and I was literally tearing up, emotional. I was like, this is exactly where I should be.

“You are where your feet are, and I was very happy with where my feet were.”

You can watch the complete interview below.

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The post Jason Day explains his plan to get back to World No. 1 — and stay there appeared first on Golf.

The post Jason Day explains his plan to get back to World No. 1 — and stay there appeared first on Golf.

He was at the tail end of a career year, winning five times (including a major) and had finally summited the World Golf Ranking. For the first time in his career, Day was World No. 1. The Australian had made golf look easy in 2015, and it was more a question of when, rather than if, he’d win his next major title.

Eight years later, he’s still searching for it.

Despite making golf look easy at his peak, Day, as so many others have, could not continue the momentum forever. He had another solid season in 2016, winning three times, and added another couple victories in 2018. Then, he hit a wall. The injuries piled up, his swing broke down, and Day plummeted in the OWGR. By October 2022, he found himself outside the top 150 in the world.

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Still, he persisted. He worked on his swing (and his body) with the intent to climb that summit once again. And he wasn’t shy with the media about his goal of returning to the top.

“It’s more of a self-motivator,” Day told Dylan Dethier in GOLF.com’s newest franchise, Breakthrough. “When you put something out there like that, you’re like, ‘OK, I need to do it.'”

This past season, Day made marked strides in that pursuit. At the Byron Nelson, the Aussie won for the first time in five years. Later in the summer, he finished runner-up at the Open Championship, his best major result since 2016. He’s now No. 19 in the OWGR.

“For me, it’s like I want to get back to World No. 1,” Day said. “I know how it felt there. I know how hard I had to work to get there. I know what it was like when I was there, and I would make certain tweaks and changes once I get back there to ultimately stay there a lot longer than I did.”

Check out the entire episode of Breakthrough below.

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The post The time Jason Day hid in a bunker to avoid boarding-school expulsion appeared first on Golf.

The post The time Jason Day hid in a bunker to avoid boarding-school expulsion appeared first on Golf.

Day said his mom made the “ultimate sacrifice” to send him away for school at a time when his life was spiraling. His father had died. One of his sisters had run away from home. He was drinking and getting into fights at school.

“Boarding school was a good thing for me because it taught me, like, how to grow up and what you had to do, like wash, how to wash clothes and how to cook for yourself and all that stuff too,” Day told GOLF’s Dylan Dethier on the first episode of Breakthrough, a new series where we sit down with golf’s most interesting people about the most pivotal moments of their golfing lives.

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“So I grew up pretty quick.”

However, that didn’t mean Day wasn’t off committing the shenanigans many teenagers do when they are away from their parents. In fact, one night, it nearly cost him getting kicked out of his boarding school.

The school, Hills International College, was in the middle of nowhere, Day said. But, he and his friends would often sneak out to the “Blue Light Disco.”

“It was just like this little area where everyone would come and underage people would go and dance and listen to music,” Day said.

But one time, he said, they got caught.

“We got a phone call — because at the time, like, we didn’t have any iPhones or anything. We got a call on a crappy cell phone that like, ‘The dorm master is looking for you. You guys are screwed,'” Day said. “They locked the gates and the security guard is driving his car looking through the trees and stuff.”

The group tried to make an escape from the guard. Day was lucky to be running behind someone because his friend in front ran into a barbed wire fence and cut himself.

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It’s here we need to explain that the Hills International College offered a golf program, in which Day was enrolled in. Because of that, the school is surrounded by a golf course.

That’s why, after the group hopped the fence, they immediately jumped into a bunker.

“We’re laying like this in a bunker. And you can see the light shining over you like this,” he said, motioning over his head.

Had the wrong person found them, the consequences could have been dire for the teens. However, it was Day’s golf coach, Collin Swatton, who got to them first.

“We’re like, ‘Hey, man, like, what should we do?'” Day recalled. “And he’s like, ‘You guys just go to your dorm.'”

So that’s what they did. From there, they closed the doors and pretended they were asleep.

Day says ultimately, they did get “into a little bit of trouble” but it certainly could have been much worse for the future World No. 1 and major winner.

For more from Day’s interview on Breakthrough with Dylan Dethier, check out the full episode below.

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The post Jason Day’s origin story? It’s unlikely, inspiring and one-of-a-kind appeared first on Golf.

The post Jason Day’s origin story? It’s unlikely, inspiring and one-of-a-kind appeared first on Golf.

Just a few minutes late, of course. And he had a good reason.

“The Big Cat was in there, so I had to wait it out,” he said as he sat down, chuckling.

It was just after 9 a.m. in the locker room at the Cape Club of Palm City when Day took his seat. The Big Cat in question was, of course, Tiger Woods, a fellow attendee of the day’s Bridgestone Golf photoshoot. And his deference to the man in red and black was a reminder that there are some golfers still ahead of Day in the pecking order.

But there aren’t many.

We have short memories — in sports, in society, in media, in general — so it’s easy to forget that we’re just a few years removed from Day being a fixture atop the professional game. He was inside the top 10 as recently as 2019. A few years before that, from 2015 into 2016, he put together one of the most incredible stretches of PGA Tour play in recent history, winning the PGA Championship and the Match Play and the Players plus four other tournaments over the course of 15 starts.

“There’s a lot of guys on Tour that are happy to be 70th on FedEx,” he said, reflecting. “That’s well-documented. You’re earning a very, very good living. It’s very easy. You’re not much in the spotlight. You’re getting a decent chunk of change outside of golf from sponsors and stuff.”

But not Day.

“Being No. 1 in the world is a lifestyle choice. You have to wake up every single day and go, I have to do this every single day. I have to be disciplined in my body, in my nutrition, in my mental side. You have to dedicate and give yourself to that. And certain things around you have to sacrifice for that.”

What’s incredible is that a decade before that, Day was lost. He was a rebellious teenager, struggling to cope with the loss of his father, struggling to make sense of the relationship they’d had. He was drinking and fighting. He was going anywhere but World No. 1.

“I started going down a pretty rough road,” he said. His father died. One sister ran away from home. His eldest sister did what she could to keep the family together, but it was a challenge. “I was starting to go down this road of drinking, getting in fights at school. And that was just not what my mom wanted me to go down.”

So how’d he course-correct? What happened that brought Day from his humble Queensland beginnings to the top rungs of the game? And once he plummeted from those heights all the way to No. 175, how’d he summon the will to battle his way back?

I wanted to tap into Day’s memory and to take him out of the day-to-day process of obsessive improvement to better understand his journey. Simply put: Why him?

Day hasn’t yet completed the journey back to World No. 1. But as of this week he’s back inside the top 20. That’s a hell of a long way to come.

This is the first episode of Breakthrough, a series where we sit down with golf’s most interesting people about the most pivotal moments of their golfing lives. I hope you take some time to watch the full conversation, which you’ll find in the video at the top of this page.

As for Day? He’s still climbing. One moment from the conversation struck me, near the end, when he described talking to a buddy who’s just beginning a swing overhaul.

“He’s just starting this journey too and I’m two years into it and I’m like, dude, this is going to be the greatest journey of your life,” Day said wistfully. “You’re going to absolutely love it. I was actually jealous, a little bit. Because when I started my swing changes it was complete heartache all the time. Because I was like, why can’t I just get it in this position? And I look at it from the time that I started to the timeline of it…I have jumped headfirst into this rabbithole. It’s really, really exciting.”

Dylan welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.

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