The winners of the LIV Golf team championship this week in Chicago won’t just be taking home piles of the Saudi PIF money. There’s also a championship ring, which sounds about as gaudy as it gets.
During a press conference on Wednesday, Jon Rahm and Joaquin Niemann were told about the ring that could be gracing one of their fingers on Sunday.
“I’m going to read you some information about the ring that you guys would get to take home,” an interviewer said. “It has 5.78 carats of white diamonds, has 1.2 carats of natural green emeralds, has green glow-in-the-dark UV enamel detailing, has a concealed ball marker with an embossed QR code. The QR code permalinks to the video reel of your winning moment so the winner can relive and share their victory anytime that they wish, and it also has one carat of black diamonds, 14 carat gold weight of 84.8 grams. How cool would it be to take this home?”
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“Yeah, that’s pretty cool,” Niemann said. “Probably my wife won’t be happy knowing that my ring would have more.” The transcript says only that laughter ensue. A guess is it would have more bling than his wife’s wedding band, which is never a good thing.
“I feel it’s pretty special,” he continued. “It’s a little different than other trophies, so it would be pretty cool to have an extra ring.”
“I’m trying to picture what it looks like right now, and I can’t get that in my mind. It’s a lot. It’s definitely a lot,” said Rahm. “But honestly, who cares what it is as long as you’re the one that has it. That’s, I think, what most of us will be thinking.”
Last season, LIV CEO Greg Norman presented a ring from jeweler Ben Baller to individual champion Talor Gooch.
“I took a year absence from jewelry making and this was my first project back on my comeback tour,” Baller told LIV’s Mike McAllister for a story last year. “Once I built a solid friendship with RangeGoats captain Bubba Watson, I knew I had to do it. Especially after the amazing time I had in [LIV Golf] Chicago and playing in the LIV Pro-Am.”
To the victors go the spoils. And in this case some serious bling.