As a professional golfer, Jon Rahm has traveled the globe many times over. But he probably never imagined he’d end up spending part of a tournament week in a Hong Kong basement. Singing karaoke.
Such is life on the road, though. In particular, when you’re a LIV Golf team captain looking for bonding experiences for your squad.
Rahm revealed the random, funny spot he went with his Legion XIII mates earlier this season at his presser ahead of this week’s LIV Chicago event. It’s a long story, so we’ll let him take it from here.
Q. Beyond the victories themselves, what kind of moments have you experienced as a captain that have been gratifying, whether it’s watching Caleb develop, maybe it’s a moment that sticks out in your mind from a team bonding standpoint, maybe it’s a sponsorship? What kind of gratifying moments have there been there?
JON RAHM: “I do get some moments where some players can be a little bit more vulnerable towards me more than they would ever have been because of the position I’m in as captain, and I think they’re also more willing to ask for help because of the environment we’re in as opposed to any other tour being more individual. Sometimes people can hesitate asking for advice.
“Without getting too much into what people have asked, I think my favorite part of this year, having arrived early in Hong Kong and having plenty of time until Friday after a team dinner, for some reason, I don’t know if it was me or Tyrrell, I think it might have been me, who had the brilliant idea of let’s go find a karaoke bar, and Google Maps works as it works, translated from Chinese to English.
“Finding myself and Tyrrell in this building in Hong Kong Island, not that we were ever in danger, but somehow I ended up on the roof looking for this place. At some point we ended up in the basement finding a different place. So that whole story as a team and almost showing—the one that’s traveled the least, and I know his name comes up in a lot of it, but it’s Caleb; Caleb hasn’t traveled that much, hasn’t seen that much worldwide. Him telling the story of we were in the sketchiest part of the city. We were not. We were in a very nice part of Hong Kong Island, never in danger.
“Almost having those team experiences—we ended up finding a very nice place. It was a lot of fun. Jet lag hours, your brain and your body are obviously operating in different places and you’re awake at weird times, so it was in a weird way a very fun night with the team, unexpected because not that it was the plan, but recalling that story the next morning from Caleb’s eyes thinking that we were—I wouldn’t know how to explain it, but if he were to tell you the story, you would have thought we were on skid row. We were not. It was a little bit of a fun night early on in the year.”
Sounds fun. Especially since the gang all made it out in one piece. So how’s Rahm’s singing?
“I’m a terrible singer,” said Rahm, who added it was his first time doing karaoke. “I’ve said many times if I could trade a lot of my golfing talent for singing, I would, but not everybody has the bravery, I guess, to stand up and sing. But most of us did. I guess after a while you get comfortable enough. But not in public. We had our own little room. There’s no way without going in a room like this and sing. No chance.”
Oh, man. Now we just have to keep our fingers crossed that a video of this night eventually gets out.
Regardless, you can’t say that the experience didn’t help the team. Legion XIII has won three times since then, including the last two LIV events as they remain comfortably ahead of Bryson DeChambeau’s Crushers for the top spot in the team standings. Even if it sounds like they wouldn’t be No. 1 in a LIV sing-off.
