Jon Rahm deserved the LIV Golf Individual Championship. Here’s why.

No, Jon Rahm didn’t win five times like Joaquin Niemann did in 2025. In fact, the Legion XIII captain didn’t win a single regular-season tournament. But he did repeat as the season-long Individual Championship during the 13-tournament regular-season schedule. The math, based on that one specific category, doesn’t add up.

Even Rahm admits as much. “One could argue he was probably the more deserving guy to win this. But we have the points system that we have, and somehow, I don't know how, I managed to pull through and get it done.”

That gives us a few things to unpack.

First, everyone knew the points system. It was set prior to the season opener. It never changed. In fact, it hasn’t changed since the first LIV Golf season. Tournament winners get 40 points, second place gets 30 points, and only the top 24 receive points. The odds were definitely long for a season-long champ to not win an individual event – but the odds were never impossible. There was always a remote chance. It’s just that nobody ever expected it to happen.

Second, the title is for a true season-long championship. Not the one with the most tournament victories, but the one who plays the best over the entire course of the season. Yes, you would think winning single tournaments goes hand-in-hand with winning a season-long race. But that’s not always the case. In fact, Rahm himself has been on the other side.

In 2022, Rory McIlroy won the DP World Tour’s season-long Race to Dubai. He did so with 10 starts – none of which resulted in a victory. But in nine of those starts, McIlroy finished inside the top 10 … and the only time he didn’t was a T12 in Abu Dhabi. Rahm, meanwhile, had two wins in his nine Race to Dubai-eligible starts that year, including the DP World Tour Championship, but finished more than 1,000 points behind McIlroy. Why? Rahm had five results that were worse than McIlroy’s lowest finish.

A quote from McIlroy that year after he clinched the title in Dubai: “I was a model of consistency the whole way through the year. A lot of top finishes … A really consistent season putting in good performances. Would have been nice to get one win in there at the end of the year here.”

Sound familiar?

Consistency mattered that year for McIlroy. Consistency mattered this year for Rahm. He made 13 starts. He finished second four times. He finished top 10 in 12 starts. His only non-top 10 start? A tie for 11th in Dallas when Bryson DeChambeau knocked him down a spot with a birdie on his final hole. Sounds a lot like the McIlroy year.

It’s why Rahm is a deserving champion, a player whose week-to-week tenacity should be celebrated and rewarded. After all, isn’t that the definition of a season-long champion? Someone who produces each time they tee off. Someone who continues to grind, continues to push, even when victory is no longer a realistic option.

Rahm used the analogy of Call of Duty video game competitors, referencing something called “Scrap Time.” Not being a Call of Duty player myself – I’m not exactly the target demographic – I had to look up the reference.

Evidently, it happens during the game’s Hardpoint mode when players are trying to secure “a few extra seconds of score, or position themselves strategically for the next hill.” In golf terms, this sounds like the equivalent of a back-door top 10, the gaining of ground on the leaderboard even if victory isn’t achievable.

Or as Rahm explained it as it pertains to his own situation:

“It's truly what I would say is my MO as a competitor. It's 54 holes. So just because you had a rough first 36, it doesn't mean that it's over. You can get it done. The same way somebody shoots 10-under on the first day, you can do it on Sunday as well.

“It's always been in my DNA to fight as hard as one can until the end of the tournament. I think I've said it many times: 32nd is better than 33rd. I think with that mentality, I've been able to have a lot of really good Sundays and put myself in a good position and keep adding points. Slow and steady in this case won the race. …

“It's just that mentality of fighting until the end, I guess, every single day, every shot is what's kept me so high up every tournament, and it adds up.”

You want to compare number of wins? No one will argue. Niemann had a tremendous season, a record-setting one. More wins in a single LIV Golf year than anybody else. A season that we can all agree is not an anomaly but a potential foreshadowing of true dominance from a 26-year-old who is only now reaching his potential.

But let’s compare a few other things that may offer a counter-argument to who deserves the season-long title.

Rahm’s average finish position for 13 starts this season was 5.3. Niemann’s was 13.08. Nearly 90% of Niemann’s points were packed into his five wins. He had just one other top 10 in his other starts – the T4 in Indy. Niemann had seven finishes that were below Rahm's worst result.

Rahm’s stroke average this season was 68.2, which led the league. Niemann was second, a half-stroke higher at 68.7. Another way to look at it: Rahm was 122 under for 39 rounds this season; Niemann was 102 under. That 20-stroke difference was huge. And remember – it's a true apples-to-apples comparison. Same course. Same condition.

In other words, if you think of the Individual Championship as a 39-round tournament, Rahm wins handily.

Rahm practically carried Legion XIII to the top seed, with four team victories this season. In 13 starts, he led his team in scoring 11 times. He was second in the team order once and third another team. Niemann, meanwhile, led his Torque GC team in scoring five times, was second four times, third three times and last once.

None of this is to belittle Niemann’s achievements. Certainly, winning is the primary objective for every golfer, especially the elite ones who value hardware above all else. Niemann had a season everyone else would envy.

Would Rahm trade places with Niemann this season? The freshness of the outcome Sunday didn’t seem like the appropriate time to provoke such a response. Certainly Niemann himself was disheartened and disappointed not to hold the single-season Individual Championship.

Maybe the question should be, would Niemann trade places with Rahm?

“It’s kind of hard to swallow,” Niemann said of the outcome. “At the end of the day, it is what it is.”

At the end of the final day in Indianapolis, Rahm shot an 11-under 60 to overtake Niemann. It was a brilliant, clutch performance. He had to produce near-perfection to have any shot, and he had to hope Niemann couldn’t match him. Had Niemann shot 63 on Sunday, the Torque captain would’ve clinched the title. Instead, he shot 66. A terrific score – but not enough.

Small margins. That’s to be expected in a season-long race with two great competitors taking completely different paths to the same objective. The tortoise, as it so often does, finds a way to beat the hare. In this instant-gratification, short-attention span existence that permeates our culture, the steady producer often goes unrewarded. But Jon Rahm didn’t. He delivered every day that he teed off this season.

That’s something worth rewarding. Worth celebrating. It may take time, but we’ll all eventually appreciate his remarkable season.