LIV Golf – Jon Rahm wins LIV Golf Chicago and individual Championship, with Crushers at the best team

September 16, 2024 – Jon Rahm’s first regular season since joining LIV Golf ended Sunday with his second tournament win in three starts, a perfect streak of top-10 finishes, and the coveted season-long Individual Championship.

Those are impressive accomplishments but nothing beyond what the Legion XIII captain and two-time major winner expected from himself when he began this new adventure in his career last December.

“I wouldn’t say it exceeded my expectations … but it definitely met what I expected,” Jon Rahm said.

The 29-year-old Spanish star shot a bogey-free 4-under 66 on Sunday at Bolingbrook Golf Club to hold off Torque GC Captain Joaquin Niemann to win both LIV Golf Chicago and the Individual title. Niemann and Fireballs GC Captain Sergio Garcia tied for second, three shots back.

In shooting 11 under, Rahm played bogey-free golf for the last 38 holes and suffered just one bogey all week (in Friday’s first round) while winning for the second time. He also won in LIV Golf UK in July and came close to winning in Greenbrier last month, losing in a playoff to Brooks Koepka.

Rahm finished in the top 10 in all 12 regular-season tournaments that he finished. The lone outlier was his WD due to a foot infection in Houston. It was his consistency all season that fueled his final point total of 235.17, nearly 16 points better than Niemann, also a two-time winner in 2024.

“It was quite fun to see Jon Rahm play as well as he did this year,” said Crushers GC Captain Bryson DeChambeau, whose team won its third title this season while securing the top seed for next week’s Dallas Team Championship. “That’s a year.”

The battle between Rahm and Niemann for the Individual Championship was just one of several races to be determined in this week’s regular-season finale.

Final seeds for Dallas were finalized, with Crushers GC, Legion XIII and Ripper GC earning the three byes for next Friday’s quarterfinals.

With Rahm and Niemann finishing 1-2 in the Individual standings, Sergio Garcia overtook Legion’s Tyrrell Hatton for the final bonus-earning spot on the podium. The margin between Garcia and Hatton, who finished solo fourth, was one point.

“It was a good fight,” Sergio Garcia said.

The fight between Rahm and Niemann was exceptional. Rahm entered the day with a three-stroke advantage over Niemann, who needed to finish ahead of Rahm on the leaderboard to win the championship.

Niemann started with birdies on two of his first three holes to apply early pressure, but Rahm never wavered. He made three birdies in his first 10 holes, and then made two consecutive par-saving putts on 11 and 12 to avoid giving Niemann an opening.

A three-putt par at the par-5 14th was the only negative of Rahm’s round, but he bounced back with a birdie at 17 to close out any hopes of a late Niemann rally. The fact that the season’s three best players finished at the top of the Chicago leaderboard was a fitting finale.

“You can’t really script it that much better, right?”, Jon Rahm said. “… It was definitely a stressful day, but that pressure is a privilege.”

Said Joaquin Niemann: “I knew I had to do something great, and I felt like I did. I played amazing golf. But I feel like to beat someone like Jon Rahm, you’ve got to do things better.”

No one in the 2024 LIV Golf League was better than Rahm. The championship ring that he received post-round Sunday was a fitting tribute, even if it needs to be resized to fit his finger. The season-long title, meanwhile, is a perfect fit.

“It’s a different feeling,” Jon Rahm said. “Just being able to culminate all the good golf all season, and especially doing it by winning individually today I think is what makes it so much more special. Knowing that I had to win and getting it done is something to really be proud of and something to reflect on.”

CRUSHERS CLAIM TOP SEED

Bryson DeChambeau and his Crushers GC entered LIV Golf Chicago having already secured one of the three quarterfinal byes for next week’s Dallas Team Championship.

But the team hadn’t won a tournament since Hong Kong in March and had just a half-point lead over Legion XIII in the team standings. The top seed was on the line at Bolingbrook, and so was the ability to send a message to the other 12 teams.

The Crushers delivered on both counts, winning their third tournament title of the season by one stroke and securing the top seed, which will allow DeChambeau to pick his opponent in next Saturday’s semifinals. It’s the Crushers’ second consecutive win in Chicago; they won last season at Rich Harvest Farms.

“We wanted to prove a point,” Bryson DeChambeau said. “We wanted to show that we’re back, and we wanted to have some momentum going into next week. We feel like we’ve got ourselves in a good place.”

Anirban Lahiri led the Crushers in the final round with a 3-under 67, while DeChambeau shot 68, Paul Caseyshot 70 and Charles Howell III – in just his second start since returning from a leg injury – shot a 71. Casey had a bogey-free round with 18 pars, the first time he’s done that in his career.

The three-day counting score of 14 under was the second lowest total by any winning team this season, a testament to the toughness of Bolingbrook.

Casey said that Saturday’s round “felt like a Chicago major had broken out.” Sunday’s field stroke average was two strokes lower but still challenging.

For a team with three veteran players captained by the reigning U.S. Open champ, it played to their strengths. And now they go into Dallas not only as the defending champs but with plenty of momentum.

“Proved to ourselves that we’re in a good spot,” Casey said. “We talked about it internally, we haven’t gotten a win in a while. Let’s go get one – and we did. We’re proud of that.”

NIEMANN, GARCIA HAPPY WITH THEIR SEASONS

 

Torque GC Captain Joaquin Niemann led the Individual points race for most of the season until Jon Rahm caught him in the last two tournaments. But the 25-year-old from Chile still takes satisfaction in finishing second in the season-long race.

“I’m pretty happy,” Niemann said. “I was telling my caddie that I don’t feel any disappointment. I feel like I gave it everything that I had. It didn’t feel like I gave a shot away the whole season. That for me is a win.”

Fireballs GC Captain Sergio Garcia finished third in the season-long race, overtaking Rahm’s teammate Tyrrell Hatton this week. The 44-year-old Garcia won his first LIV Golf tournament in his native Spain in a playoff at Valderrama.

“More than anything, just to finish as high as possible, it’s great against all these guys that are so good,”Sergio Garcia said.

By REDACCIÓN