LIV Golf loses, Jon Rahm and America win as Brooks Koepka chokes away the Masters

AUGUSTA, Ga. — LIV lost.

LIV Golf’s best players played great, but in the end, they lost. So, LIV lost. So, who won? The PGA Tour? Golf? ‘Merica?

Yes. Yes. And yes.

Make no mistake about it: Whether the green jackets like it or not, this Masters was a referendum on good and ... other. Also, make no mistake about this: the green jackets are delighted with the outcome. When they announced that LIV players could play this year, they scolded those players for deciding to abandon their home.

It was a wet, delayed, dangerous 87th edition that saw wounded Tiger Woods make a 23rd consecutive cut before quitting, and saw Fred Couples become the oldest to make the cut, at 63. It saw Jon Rahm roar back from four strokes down in the third round to a four-shot win and his second major title. He won the 2021 U.S. Open.

It also included the best of LIV Golf, which represents the worst of what we are.

Unadulterated greed led great players like Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, and Round 4 leader Brooks Koepka to sign up with LIV for a lifetime of sports-washing duty. Each was given at least $100 million to serve as toadies for the Saudis, whose oppressive regime, connection to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and abduction, murder, and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Kashoggi make them unpalatable for millions of Americans.

If Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman and LIV CEO Greg Norman are the puppeteers, Koepka and Mickelson were this week’s ambassadors of oppression.

Rahm? Hero.

Rahm trailed Koepka by two strokes entering the final round, but from there it wasn’t close. Rahm beat Koepka by six strokes on the day, 69-75. On the birthday of his hero, fellow Spaniard Seve Ballesteros, and on the 40th anniversary of Ballesteros’ third and final Masters win, Rahm beat both Koepka and Mickelson by four strokes, at 12-under. Patrick Reed, a minor villain in the story, tied with three others for fourth, at 7-under.

It’s not as if LIV golfers were metaphysically suppressed at the Masters. They showed out.

“It’s great for the Tour, yeah,” said Cam Smith, the reigning British Open champion and, at No. 6, the highest-ranked LIV player at the Masters.

“I think it’s the best tournament in the world, and I think everybody put on a pretty good display,” Koepka said, clearly referencing his first three days’ work.

Jordan Spieth, who finished tied for fourth at 7-under, isn’t happy that LIV wants to diminish the PGA Tour, but he was delighted to compete against his LIV mates who have been suspended by PGA and DP World Tours.

“I’ve always been a proponent that you shouldn’t keep somebody out if they qualified,” Spieth said. “As long as people keep qualifying ... that criteria makes you have to play really, really good golf.”

That’s what happened, generally. Only 18 LIV players qualified in the 88-man field but 12 of those made the cut, unlike LIV detractors Justin Thomas and Rory McIlroy. Three LIV players finished among the top six spots.

Crucially, though, none finished in the No. 1 spot. When rain suspended play Saturday afternoon, that seemed inevitable.

Koepka led by four strokes early in the third round, which the golfers completed Sunday morning after weather delays stopped play Friday and Saturday. He bogeyed eight of his last 27 holes, and, after the 14th hole Sunday, trailed by five. It was an epic collapse.

When Mickelson sank his birdie on No. 18 to post at 8-under, 40 yards away, at No. 9, Rahm logged his only bogey of the round. Things looked good for the Dark Side, until they didn’t. Rahm birdied the par-5 13th, then, after pushing his tee shot right off the 14th tee, he pulled off a clever approach shot to the 14th for another bird. That put him four ahead of Mickelson and five ahead of Koepka.

“I used an 8-iron,” Rahm said. “It started around left edge of the green, and all it had to do was fade about five yards and it would reach the slope.”

Artistry, for sure. Destiny, perhaps?

If any proof was needed that decency was meant to be served at the Masters, it arrived in the form of the tree that spat Rahm’s drive back into the fairway. Rahm had a four-shot lead but dead-pulled his tee shot off No. 18 into the pines on the left, where bathrooms and hazard lines and forest and quadruple-bogeys reside.

It could have meant disaster. It could have meant that the LIV superstars, both sitting at 8-under, could force a playoff. It could have wasted all of the good karma witnessed at Augusta National, where Koepka had choked away that two-shot lead.

Instead, something intervened. Was it divine? Was it fate? Did it wear a green jacket and throw the ball back into play?

It was Easter, after all.

Let’s consider it an Augusta miracle.

» READ MORE: Phil Mickelson gains some redemption, finishes tied for second at the Masters