Jon Rahm hopes that the PGA Tour continues to have a match play event on the schedule as he feels it makes golf look more fun and appear relatable to every other sport.
Rahm was speaking ahead of the 64-man WGC Dell Technologies Match Play – the last edition of the event in Texas before it is removed from the calendar.
The Spaniard laments the scrapping of the tournament but hopes to see a match play event added to the schedule for next year.
“I obviously love match play, so I’m hoping maybe it’s just a one-year deal and we get a match play event back on the schedule,” he said.
“I’m sure there’s a solution to it. I’m sure there’s a way around it, because I think we should have a match play event every single season.
“I just don’t know what that solution is to make it entertaining enough throughout the entire Sunday or the weekend in general.
“It’s really the only time throughout the year besides maybe the Ryder Cup where you’re playing truly against the person in front of you, which is much more relatable to every sport we play in the world, which is basically about just playing better than the team in front.
“Usually it’s very much about you minding your own business and hopefully beating the other 150 players in the field. It’s fun. It’s a lot more aggressive. You see more birdies. You see a lot of things happen.”
The world number two was then asked about the proposed golf ball changes that were announced by the R&A and USGA last week. Having thought he would avoid the question, Rahm feels if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
“They’re hyper-focused on making professional golf a little bit more difficult than it already is. I don’t know why,” he says.
“There’s plenty of things you can do to make it more difficult for us – golf-course design, course set-up, all these great things.
“We’re in a golden era of golf where it’s exploded since Covid, a lot of people are watching, you have a completely different tour, all these things are happening for the game and it’s growing. Why change what’s working?
“I think there’s other things that can be done than changing the technology of the game to make it more challenging for us. That would be my suggestion to them. You can negate a lot of nowadays’ distance with different golf course design.”
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