But let me just say: what the champions will get courtesy of Jon Rahm is downright perfect. It’s tapas and pintxos! Featuring Iberico ham, Spanish potato omelets and chicken croquettes — side note, if you haven’t had Spanish tapas, you need to!
That’s followed by a crab salad and the main course will be Pil-Pil fish or ribeye. Dessert? It’s cake.
The fan who tried to make a play for the ball might have wound up with a bruise or two.
Adrian Meronk’s 64 wasn’t the best score of the second round at LIV Golf Hong Kong, in fact that honor went to Abraham Ancer, who finished with a 62 to cruise out to a five-stroke advantage heading into the final round of play at the Hong Kong Golf Club Fanling.
For Meronk, who admitted when he first joined LIV Golf that he did so due to his snub from the Ryder Cup team, the spectacular second round still has him looking way up the leaderboard at Ancer. Although his 64 put him at 8 under through the second round of play, Ancer’s scintillating effort pushed him to 15 under. He’s trailed by Harold Varner III and Eugenio Chacarra, both at 10 under, and the trio of Jon Rahm, Cam Smith and Henrik Stenson at 9 under.
But after Meronk drained a lengthy birdie putt on the 10th hole, one of seven birdies he posted on the day, he casually tossed the ball up into a gallery sitting in an adjacent bar area. The fan who tried to make a play for the ball might have wound up with a bruise or two.
“It’s a golf course where you hit all your clubs in your bag, and there’s a lot of different ways to play every hole.”
This week’s LIV Golf stop is unique on a few different levels.
As the league makes its first-ever trip to Hong Kong, its players will be teeing it up at Hong Kong Golf Club, a par-70 track that measures to just 6,710 yards. It’s one of two courses that LIV will visit this season that plays less than 7,000 yards in addition to Real Club Valderrama in Spain, where the league will be July 12-14. It’s rare for the pros to play such a short course. For comparison, TPC River Highlands will be the shortest course on the 2024 PGA Tour schedule and played at 6,852 yards for the 2023 Travelers Championship.
“Realistically like in competition? Probably never,” said Bryson DeChambeau of the last time he played a course this short. “In tournament competition, it’s definitely a unique test. There’s a lot of shot shaping you’ve got to have out here, and your iron play has to be on point.”
But don’t get it twisted, just because the holes aren’t as long as usual, some of the league’s biggest hitters are still planning on using driver.
“What’s funny is I can use a driver a couple times out here, actually,” added DeChambeau. “No. 9, 3, 1 if it’s into the wind. There’s a few places where I can actually use it, surprisingly.”
“It kind of all depends on the wind, but I hit quite a few drivers,” echoed Dustin Johnson. “I think it’s a golf course where you hit all your clubs in your bag, and there’s a lot of different ways to play every hole. If you want to hit a lot of drivers you can or you can lay back. It kind of just depends. Like I said, just depending on the wind really.”
A handful of players have history at Hong Kong Golf Club seeing as it has hosted the Asian Tour’s Hong Kong Open since 1959 and will do so once again this year, Nov. 21-24. Cameron Smith was runner-up in 2023, reserve player Wade Ormsby is a two-time winner in 2017 and 2020 and Ian Poulter won way back in 2010.
“I love how this golf course plays. It is really a smart person’s golf course,” said Smith. “It’s a golf course, although it presents a lot of opportunities, you have to be really patient around here, particularly if you’re off the fairway. It can bite you in the bum pretty quick around here, and just need to be smart.”
“The thing is it plays longer than this just because on a lot of tee shots you’re simply not allowed to be hitting drivers, so you’re playing it to a spot. It plays a little bit longer,” explained Jon Rahm. “You have the option of hitting driver if you want, but you’re going to have to be extremely accurate.
“But I’m in the belief that as a player, you have to adjust to the golf course and adjust to the conditions and shoot low, and whoever does that obviously the best is going to succeed. If anything, this type of golf is some of my favorite.”
Players continue to fail to address the OWGR’s main reason for not granting LIV points in the first place.
Jon Rahm didn’t know LIV Golf was still trying to earn Official World Golf Ranking points before the league withdrew its application on Tuesday, but that didn’t stop the Spaniard from once again calling out the ranking system.
In fact, the two-time major champion doubled down on his previous criticism of the OWGR ahead of this week’s LIV event in Hong Kong.
“I didn’t think it was a good system back then, and if anything, the more time that goes on, the more it proves to be wrong,” said Rahm. “If anybody in this world, for example, doesn’t think (Joaquin Niemann) deserves to be in the top 10 or doesn’t know that he’s a top player in the world, I don’t know what game you’re watching. We can tell. I think anybody who watches golf can tell who the best players in the world are, and obviously I don’t think the ranking is reflective of that right now to its entirety.”
LIV Golf CEO and Commissioner Greg Norman informed players of the decision to withdraw the points application via a letter on Tuesday. The original application was sent in July of 2022 and the OWGR initially denied points last October.
“We have made significant efforts to fight for you and ensure your accomplishments are recognized within the existing ranking system,” Norman wrote. “Unfortunately, OWGR has shown little willingness to productively work with us.”
When it denied LIV points, the OWGR claimed the league – which features a mostly-closed field of 54 players playing 54-hole, shotgun start, no-cut events – wasn’t able to be compared to the other 24 tours under its world ranking wing. Also stated to be of concern were the qualifying and relegation methods employed by LIV Golf.
“We are not at war with them,” Peter Dawson, chairman of the OWGR board, said to the AP. “This decision not to make them eligible is not political. It is entirely technical. LIV players are self-evidently good enough to be ranked. They’re just not playing in a format where they can be ranked equitably with the other 24 tours and thousands of players trying to compete on them.”
LIV Golf was displeased, to say the least, with the OWGR news and released a lengthy statement condemning the ranking system by saying it had lost trust and clarity by not rewarding LIV player performances. The statement, however, failed to address the reasons given in the original AP report as to why the application for world ranking points was rejected. Bryson DeChambeau did the same on Wednesday.
“The cut thing — there’s numerous things they brought up, and it’s like, we can solve for all that, just tell us what to do, and nothing has gone — anyway, it is what it is, and at this point we just need to figure out how to get all the governing bodies to come together and figure out what the best system is for the game of professional golf moving forward,” said DeChambeau, who failed to mention the closed shop or pathways to the league.
“I just think what’s right is in the best interest of the game, and we should focus on having the best players at the majors, and continuing to have that around the game of golf is only important to growing the game of golf and to make the game of golf continue to be as relevant as it is now and even more in the future,” said DeChambeau. “What I think about it is we need to find a collective way, all the governing bodies, everybody, come together, sit down and figure this out, because we need to do this for the fans.”
The one point we can all agree on is that the major championships are better when all the best players are competing. No player or fan would say otherwise. As LIV players drop in the OWGR and past champions lose their exemption status, the responsibility will fall on events like the Masters and PGA Championship to reward players like Joaquin Niemann, who have gone out of their way to try to qualify.
“But our job shouldn’t be to make the rules or impose the rules or enforce the rules,” Rahm added. “We’re here to entertain, and it’s the governing bodies’ job to be doing this and be adaptable to the changing environment.”
Galletti went from the Monday qualifier to making the cut at TPC Scottsdale in his first PGA Tour start.
SCOTTSDALE Ariz. — As much as the concept of quiet exists on a Saturday at TPC Scottsdale, it followed Nicolo Galletti. When he slid a birdie putt past the 14th hole, it earned only a wayward expletive from a fan who wanted to draw some laughs. When he slid another past the 15th, there was a customary groan, but not a personal one. No one, it seemed, knew who Galletti was, and why would they?
On Saturday afternoon, as he made his way around the WM Phoenix Open in anonymity, Galletti was ranked 1044th in the world. He had never played in a PGA Tour event. In 56 career tournaments across the Korn Ferry Tour, PGA Tour Latinoamerica and PGA Tour Canada, his total earnings added up to just $102,814. A finish in the top 65 would ensure this week as the most lucrative of his career.
So when Galletti walked into the stadium hole at 16, there were none of the “A-S-U” chants that Sun Devil golfers usually receive. If any fans even noticed the pitchfork on his golf bag, they kept it to themselves.
Galletti, though, was determined to change that. He’s been here before, in this crowd. The only year he missed the Open was in 2022, when he fell short in a playoff at the Monday qualifier and couldn’t stomach the idea of seeing the tournament live. Every other February, he’s made his way to TPC Scottsdale as a paying fan, just like everyone else. He knows what this is all about.
“Definitely wanted to pump them up,” Galletti said.
Even if no one knew his name, he figured he could do that with a marketing stunt, throwing headphones in the crowd as he walked towards the 16th green. That got the fans on Galletti’s side, and when he drained a 19-foot birdie putt, they erupted. Finally, someone even noticed his college allegiances. A group of four fans in American flag rompers — the type to arrive at 3:30 a.m. for their premium perch — yelled out ‘ASU baby’ and ‘Go Sun Devils.’
4 under on his back nine and two shots inside the projected cutline.
What they didn’t know was that, with Galletti’s birdie, everything changed. He was excited to play to the fans, but also to flip the switch on his own fortunes. The putt gave him a three-stroke buffer to the cut line, enough to all but ensure his tournament would go on. By the end of the round, he was still at 4 under, in a tie for 34th.
It would be a moment out of an aspiring PGA Tour pro’s dreams, except that the past few years have been so turbulent and so busy that Galletti hasn’t had time for dreaming.
“This is always what I thought I would be doing for my life,” he said, but even in college, it was difficult to know what path that would take. “I was struggling pretty good,” Galletti said, recalling an ASU career that only featured four top-10 finishes in as many years.
Meanwhile, his senior year roommate at The Hub, across from Sun Devil Stadium, was the No. 1 amateur in the world. Ticketed for green jackets and multi-million dollar paydays. Some guy named Jon Rahm.
The two were best friends, a pair of soccer fans with southern European connections. Rahm is from the Basque Country in northern Spain; Galletti’s father moved to the U.S. from Italy. On his collegiate bio, he listed his dream historical sporting event not as a bygone Masters or U.S. Open, but as Italy’s triumph at the 2006 World Cup.
They talked about all of that, and everything else roommates talk about. To this day, they’re still good friends. This week, Rahm has been texting him with a steady stream of advice, most of it focused on staying calm amid the hysteria.
But even back at ASU, long before Rahm ditched the PGA Tour for LIV Golf, the notion of playing together on big stages was never discussed.
Nicolo Galletti plays his second shot on the ninth hole during the first round of the 2024 WM Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale. (Photo: Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
“We were a couple different levels back then,” Galletti said with a laugh. “Which we still are now,” he added, as if that fact were easy to forget.
This season may be the most promising of Galletti’s career — his performance in DP World Tour Q-School last year earned him a card for that circuit — but it’s still not easy. His last event was the Mauritius Open. His next event will be back in that part of the world, two weeks from now at the Kenya Open.
“Definitely don’t have the biggest bank account right now,” Galletti said. “But it is what it is. This week will be nice.”
That’s especially true in contrast to where he’s come from. In 2019 — three years after he graduated from ASU, with his golf career still on the ground floor — he suffered an almost impossible string of injuries. There was a torn oblique that sidelined him for months, followed by a broken wrist when he was sitting on a bag stand that collapsed. As soon as the wrist healed, a friend fell into his leg at Rahm’s wedding, causing a sprained ankle.
Unable to play golf or do much exercise of any kid, Galletti added 40 pounds. “In my golfing career,” he said, “that was definitely the toughest time.”
It would have been easy to see the injuries as a sign to call it quits and to use his degree for a calmer career. Instead, they reminded him how much he needed the game.
“I just like golf a lot,” Galletti said. “I don’t really know what else I would do, to be honest.”
During the pandemic, he found a home on the Outlaw Tour, a pay-to-play circuit that got a financial boost from gamblers desperate for action. A few good weeks there helped him gain a foothold on the PGA Tour Latinoamerica, where he played 11 events in 2022. That turned into a summer run on the PGA Tour Canada last year.
By contrast, this year is steady. But it’s not really steady. Galletti knows that. Regular events on the PGA Tour — ones that don’t require a playoff in the Monday qualifier — are still a long way away.
The solution, as he sees it, is to enjoy the present. Wherever it leads.
Ding is having a historic start to his college career at ASU.
Wenyi Ding is having a historic start to his college career at Arizona State.
The mid-year enrollee and 2022 U.S. Junior Amateur champion, Ding was brilliant in his debut last month at the National Invitational Tournament in Tucson, Arizona. He finished solo second at 17-under 199, which tied the fourth-best 54-hole score in team history since 1993-94.
He destroyed that mark in his second college start in Hawaii.
Ding won the Amer Ari Invitational on Saturday at Mauna Lani’s North Course on the Big Island, topping a field that includes six of the top nine golfers in the NCAA individual rankings, and he did so in record fashion. Ding shot 27-under 189, shattering the previous ASU record, Jon Rahm’s 21-under 192 at the ASU Thunderbird Invitational.
Not only is that an ASU record, the 189 is believed to be the lowest 54-hole total in the history of men’s college golf.
Arizona State freshman Wenyi Ding at the 2024 Amer Ari Invitaitonal. (Photo: Alex Gelman/Sun Devil Athletics)
In his six collegiate rounds, Ding has yet to shoot worse than 67, and his worst round at the Amer Ari was 8-under 64. He joined Rahm and Alex del Rey as the only Sun Devil golfers since 1993-94 to shoot 16 under or better in two tournaments during their career. His 10-under 62 in the final round also tied the lowest 18-hole score in ASU history.
Ding was brilliant in Hawaii, recording only one bogey over 54 holes of play. He had 26 birdies and an eagle, as well. He beat Washington’s Finn Koelle and San Jose State’s Carl Corpus by nine shots.
In the team competition, ASU also set a 54-hole scoring record at 63-under 801. However, it was North Carolina taking the team title, beating the Sun Devils by five shots and finishing at 68-under 796.
Last year, Illinois also hit 796 as a team at the Missouri Tiger Collegiate.
Ding is 44 under in his first six rounds as a Sun Devil, and his latest round etched his name in the record books. He has shot sub-200 totals over his first two 54 holes tournaments, which is also believed to be the first time that has happened.
“It was a lot harder to be at home not competing and know that those events were going on,” Rahm said.
Simply put, Jon Rahm doesn’t regret his decision to leave the PGA Tour for LIV Golf. That said, it’s been an emotional couple of months for the Spaniard.
He missed out on title defenses last month at both The Sentry and American Express, and will miss another next week at the Genesis Invitational. Two weeks ago he couldn’t play at Torrey Pines, where he’s a two-time winner with the 2017 Farmers Insurance Open, his first PGA Tour victory, and the 2021 U.S. Open, his first major championship. This week he’s missing his hometown WM Phoenix Open.
“It was a lot harder to be at home not competing and know that those events were going on. Palm Springs and Torrey, those weeks were hard. I’ve explained so many times how important Torrey is for me,” Rahm explained earlier this week ahead of his second LIV Golf start. “And driving by Phoenix as often as I had to and knowing that I wasn’t going to play there, it’s definitely emotional. That’s one of the things that I’m going to miss.”
“I’m hoping that in the near future I can be back playing some of those events,” he added. “I would certainly love to go back and play some of them.”
But when the shotgun start begins at Las Vegas Country Club, all of that will be behind him.
“Now, when the tournament started, we’re here to compete, so whatever else is going on, whatever tournament is going on doesn’t really matter,” he explained. “We’re here to hopefully perform well and win. It’s a lot easier while we’re playing.”
Rahm certainly made it look easy in his debut last week at Mayakoba in Mexico, where he finished T-3 to lead his Legion XIII to the team title in their first event. All eyes have been on Rahm since his shocking move to the Saudi-backed league given his past comments about the 54-hole format, and while the 29-year-old seems to be enjoying his early days with LIV, his eyes are still glancing elsewhere.
“I would love to, if allowed and if I can, go play the Spanish Open, and if it doesn’t conflict with LIV’s schedule, right. But a tournament that both me and (teammate Tyrrell Hatton) are going to miss dearly is Wentworth. If I qualify, I’d still love to go play in Dubai, the DP World Tour Championship. There’s certainly events I would like to play,” Rahm said. “PGA Tour, we’ll see. If there’s ever a way back and a way where we can play, even if it’s as an invite, I will take it. Like I said, there’s certain events that are special to me that I would still love to support.”
Niemann, 25, won for the first time on the Saudi-backed circuit on Sunday after a marathon four-hole playoff against Sergio Garcia at LIV’s 2024 season opener at Mayakoba’s El Camaleon Golf Course in Mexico. For his efforts, Niemann will take home the top prize of $4 million after his wire-to-wire victory that featured a course record 12-under 59 in the first round on Friday and a two-stroke penalty after the second round.
Garcia earned a $2.25 million consolation prize for his runner-up finish, with Dean Burmester and Jon Rahm each receiving $1.25 million for their T-3 finishes.
Check out how much money each player and team earned at 2024 LIV Golf Mayakoba in Mexico.
PHOTOS: LIV Golf’s first expansion team Legion XIII debuts
Legion XIII, LIV Golf’s first expansion team, made its debut on Friday in the 2024 season-opening event at El Camaleón Golf Course in Mayakoba, Mexico.
Jon Rahm (captain), Tyrrell Hatton, Caleb Surratt and Kieran Vincent are teammates on Legion XIII.
Surratt appeared in 15 tournaments at Tennessee from 2022-23. He earned 2023 SEC Freshman of the Year honors and was the 2023 SEC individual champion.
LIV Golf consists of 12 teams, 48 players, 14 events, zero cuts and with shotgun starts.
Each stroke counts for the individual event. A winner is the player with the lowest total amount of shots after 54 holes.
The team event consists of scores for each team’s top three players, for the round count, toward the team’s total score. The team with a cumulative low score following three rounds is the team champion for the event.
During the first two days of each event, only the top three players’ scores count towards their team’s round. On the third day of an event, all four players’ scores count. The top eight teams earn points in team standings.
Below are photos of Legion XIII making its debut in LIV Golf.
“It was nice to get off the jump, just get going and play good golf,” Rahm said of his 5-under debut.
PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico —Teeing it up on Mayakoba’s El Camaleón Golf Course may seem like nothing new for Jon Rahm given his three previous appearances on the Riviera Maya on the PGA Tour from 2014-2016, but the Spaniard felt the nerves on Friday as he made his LIV Golf debut.
“Yeah, I could feel the pressure, but it’s a good thing, right?” said Rahm, who fired a 5-under 66 to sit T-4 one shot behind Sergio Garcia, two shots behind Patrick Reed and a whopping seven shots behind Joaquin Niemann after his historic 12-under 59. “It’s weird; you do get to pick a song for the first tee, and I thought maybe it was going to help. If anything, it gave it a little bit more — the heartbeat went a little bit up just from hearing a song you like.”
“I’m like, I feel confident, but the added pressure that it’s one of my favorite songs,” Rahm said of Bad Bunny’s hit track, Monaco, “but it helped because I hit a great tee shot to start the day. I felt it, but after the tee shot and the second shot and making that putt, it felt like I settled in pretty nicely.”
That’s putting it lightly. Starting on the first hole alongside Cam Smith (Ripper GC) and Talor Gooch (Smash GC) Rahm birdied five of his first seven holes to storm out the gate, which normally would put him at the top of the leaderboard if it weren’t for Niemann.
“I didn’t see him early on, and then when I was 5 under and I was tied for fourth, I was like, ‘Somebody is — I was 5 under through 7, and I was third, so I was like, ‘Okay, clearly everybody is going off.’”
After the turn, Rahm added to his tally with a pair of birdies on Nos. 13 and 15 and was cruising through the back nine until he leaked a bit of oil coming in with two bad bogeys on the 17th and 18th holes.
“I feel like one of those bogeys, 17, was avoidable. 18 was just unfortunate,” he explained. “But it doesn’t take away from how good I played those first 16 holes. It was nice to get off the jump, just get going and play good golf. So far I would say it was a very successful start.”
Seven shots back is quite the mountain to climb, especially with only 36 holes left compared to the 54 that Rahm is used to. Despite the deficit, Rahm is more focused on what he didn’t do to close out his round than what Niemann did to take his lead.
Captain Jon Rahm of Legion XIII warms up in the practice area during day one of the LIV Golf Invitational – Mayakoba at El Camaleon at Mayakoba on February 02, 2024 in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. (Photo by Manuel Velasquez/Getty Images)
“If anything I’m thinking more about that, my finish, than what Joaco did. Again, I think if the wind doesn’t pick up, we’re going to have to approach a 20-under, which again is doable,” he said. “The greens are in really good shape, and if you can put the ball in the fairway, you can give yourself chances.”
“I played a really good round today,” he added. “If I cleaned up my finish a little bit, could have been a fantastic way to finish.”
Rahm explained his first impressions of LIV as a different vibe compared to what he’s used to on Tour, but noted the music throughout the round wasn’t too different from how he plays at home – if anything the speakers on carts back in Arizona are more powerful than LIV’s, he joked. As the captain of the league’s first expansion team, Legion XIII, Rahm said earlier in the week that it was unusual to be thinking about managing his team seeing as golf is an individual sport. He then found himself watching the leaderboard on Friday to keep tabs on his teammates Tyrrell Hatton, Caleb Surratt and Kieran Vincent.
“It’s funny, the first few times I was more interested in how the team was doing than myself, which was definitely something new, and I think Cam caught me looking, he said that; it’s crazy how you might care more about the team than your individual,” Rahm explained. “Yeah, I obviously kept up. There’s three players that I want to see how they’re doing. Not their best start, but still two more days for them to show what they’re made of. Even though it’s still early; we’ve got a barely, barely turned professional player and Kieran who’s now full-time here. It could be expected to have a little bit of a difficult start.”
“But I feel like those two guys and Tyrrell at some point are going to surprise a lot of people,” he added. “Maybe not Tyrrell because he’s done it so many times, but those two guys might play a level of golf that I know they can play but that a lot of people haven’t seen.”
Legion XIII is 4 under as a team and currently sits T-7 alongside Sergio Garcia’s Fireballs GC entering Saturday’s second round.
