Brandel Chamblee believes Jon Rahm "sold his career" for "half the price it would ultimately be worth" after the Spaniard agreed to join the LIV Golf League on Thursday.
Rahm is reported to have signed a deal worth over half a billion dollars with the PIF-backed 54-hole circuit and will be increasing the number of teams in the league with the addition of his own currently-unnamed quartet.
But when the news of the current Masters champion's switch was finally confirmed, there was a considerable amount of surprise and confusion - not least from Chamblee - given Rahm's public opposition to LIV Golf since its inception in 2022.
Speaking on Golf Central recently, Chamblee suggested Rahm's decision was almost a marriage of convenience.
The Golf Channel analyst said: “I feel like a large part of the professional game is experiencing something like Stockholm Syndrome as it relates to being involved with LIV.
“You look at Jon Rahm’s words in the past and the stark contrast to what he said — what he intimated many times. It was more convenient for him to do this. It’s also clear that he sold his career out.”
The World No.3 has so far collected almost $80 million in prize money throughout his eight-year professional career on the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour, with mind-blowing figures as a result of sponsorship and other endorsements adding to the total bulging pot.
But having penned a deal with LIV to significantly and exponentially boost that figure, Chamblee argued that Rahm could have joined Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy as golfers whose total worth eventually topped $1 billion anyway.
Chamblee said: “When you look at Jon Rahm’s career and where he was headed — if it’s $300 million or $400 million, or I heard you say $560 million earlier, I would still say he short-sided himself because he did sell his career for... half the price that it would ultimately be worth.
“If you look at Rahm’s trajectory, what he was capable of doing. At 29 years of age — another 10, 11, 12 years of an 8% win percentage - I don’t think it would shock anybody that he would have eventually been worth a billion or two or three billion dollars given the nature of the escalating purses and money brought into the PGA Tour.”
Later discussing the bigger picture behind the Rahm move, Chamblee conceded that he now hopes that a deal can be agreed between LIV and the PGA Tour as it would ultimately be better for the long-term prospects of the latter.
Any agreement that is reached will likely feature private investment via a third party, with the PGA Tour having revealed discussions with Fenway Sports Group and Endeavour - among others.
Chamblee then suggested that maybe LIV felt they had to bring over some key PGA Tour players to arrive at the table with a greater pile of bargaining chips.
He said: “This is PIF’s reaction to the PGA Tour courting private equity. It was almost like they were saying, ‘Ok, you’re going to court private equity, we’re going to come down triple-fold.'"
“This is nothing more than a massive chess game. I’ll be curious to see the wording of Rahm’s engagement with LIV. Is it that he gets to keep the money and play a few LIV events, or does he get to keep the money and fall ball into the fold of the PGA Tour?”
