Rahm’s amazing consistency leads to a three-peat of the LIV Golf Individual Championship
BEDMINSTER, N.J. – For the last few LIV Golf tournaments as he closed in on his third consecutive Individual Championship, Jon Rahm wanted to stay focused on the immediate task at hand. He didn’t allow himself to look at the bigger picture, a threepeat of the season-long title.
Finally, on Sunday as he prepared for the final round of LIV Golf New York, Rahm asked his agent and his caddie the same question: What do I need to do to clinch the 2026 Individual Championship?
“Today was when I asked for the first time what needs to happen,” Rahm said about his race down the stretch with Crushers GC Captain Bryson DeChambeau.
The response he received? “A lot of good for Bryson and a lot of bad needed to happen for me not to win,” Rahm recalled. “So that was the only time I thought about it, and I just focused on my golf after that.”
Neither Rahm nor DeChambeau played particularly well at Trump National Bedminster. Rahm suffered his worst finish of any completed LIV Golf tournament, a tie for 41st at 8 over. DeChambeau wasn’t much better, finishing in a tie for 38th at 7 over.
For Rahm, it was enough to keep him 200 points above DeChambeau in the points standings, effectively eliminating the Crushers captain from catching him in the final regular-season tournament at LIV Golf Indianapolis in two weeks. Torque GC Captain Joaquin Niemann, who matched Rahm and DeChambeau with his second win of the season, moved into third.
It’s the first time that Rahm has clinched the title before the final regular-season tournament. Two years ago, he held off Niemann in Chicago by winning the tournament (with Niemann finishing T2). Last year in Indianapolis, he finished second to tournament winner Sebastian Munoz to rally past Niemann.
Unlike last year when his consistency overcame his lack of tournament victories, Rahm relied on two wins (Hong Kong and Mexico City) and four second-place finishes to give him enough cushion to overcome his fading results late this season.
“It's weird because in golf, it's something that it's odd to have still one more tournament before things are done,” Rahm said in the Bedminster clubhouse Sunday evening. “Most season-long races, you have to wait until the last event because the last event counts so much. But it feels different this year.
“Last year in my mind at least, even though it was a point system, it was a question mark with having not won, and it didn't feel the same. So, this year to play as good as I did early on and have such a big lead that I can even enjoy not playing good this week and next week, it feels really good.”
Both Niemann and DeChambeau have tried to chase down Rahm since the Spanish star joined the league in 2024 to captain the expansion Legion XIII team. Neither could match his consistency over the full season. In his first two seasons, Rahm’s only finished outside the top 10 once in 25 completed starts; this season, he was top 10 in eight of his first nine starts.
“What Jon has done over the past few years here and how he was able to top 10 pretty much every single week … for how many events now has he played … that's crazy,” DeChambeau said. “I can't explain or describe that in any other way other than it's crazy what Jon has done out here.”
Added Niemann: “I played with Jon almost every weekend for the last two years. How competitive he is, he definitely doesn't like losing, and I'm the same way as well.”
Asked if consistency is as valued as much as it should be in golf, Rahm replied: “I think everybody when it comes to sports, we have a lot of recency bias. What the latest thing you've done is the main thing that matters. I think we have that a lot.
“You can take F1, for example. [Max] Verstappen has won four championships in a row, and then last season he had a great chance, finishes second, and then now you don't really think about it. Even Scottie [Scheffler], who's had not the year he's had the last few years … and even though he's leading the FedEx Cup, we don't really talk about it because we have the recency bias that, ‘Oh, he hasn't won in the last two months.’
“I think that's what we have, and then when people start sitting down and seeing the whole picture, it's a little different.”
Rahm himself planned to sit down Sunday night – specifically in a car after leaving Bedminster – and hoped to take a few minutes to process his latest achievement. The full celebration will take place in two weeks at LIV Golf Indianapolis, but he doesn’t have to wait that long to enjoy the journey.
“I’ve got a pretty long car ride to get back to where we’re staying,” he said. “I’ll have time then for sure. Once I get over how bad I played this week, it’ll be all right.”
