Jon Rahm was at home last Tuesday, preparing coffee with his children underfoot, when the news arrived in a flood of text messages. Collin Morikawa glanced at Twitter and saw the word there. During breakfast at Michael Jordan’s private club in Florida, Brooks Koepka peered at a television and glimpsed a headline.
What was clear Tuesday — one week after the PGA Tour said it intended to join forces with the Saudi wealth fund whose LIV Golf league had fractured the sport — was that the deal Rahm, Morikawa and Koepka heard about in real time had been golf’s version of a flash grenade: stunning, staggering, disorienting.
And now, the effects lingering, they need to play the U.S. Open, a major tournament, which will begin Thursday at Los Angeles Country Club. Some escape, huh?