Jon Rahm always runs a little hot, and the fiery Spaniard let his emotion get the best of him once again during the first round of the 2026 PGA Championship.
Rahm endured an at-times frustrating first day at Aronimink Golf Club, but he was able to get it in the house, still very much in the hunt. Rahm fired a 1-under 69 that has him near the top of the leaderboard.
Jon Rahm Has Awkward Interaction at PGA Championship
That said, he had an unfortunate incident midway through his round. According to ESPN’s Paolo Uggetti, Rahm had a temper tantrum at the seventh hole.
“Not sure I’ve ever seen this: on 7, Rahm hit his approach from the rough long, got mad and swung the club at the ground.
“He took out a whole patch of grass which hit a volunteer in the face! To his credit, he immediately went over to apologize.”
The ESPN cameras caught most of the incident, as seen in a video posted to X.
While Rahm’s scorecard looks OK, he’ll no doubt have to be better the rest of the weekend if he wants to contend. He holed out for eagle during his first round to move him into red numbers, and he also added a chip-in for a birdie later on. The chip-in held him gain more than 2.6 shots on the field around the green, but he had a miserable putting day, and he was uncharacteristically errant off the tee, too.
Jon Rahm In Middle of Frustrating 2026 Season
The emotional side of Rahm is nothing new. If you Googled “Jon Rahm outburst,” you’d see a handful of on-video incidents, not even including the crashout at Aronimink. There’s also no shortage of hot-mic moments with Rahm being well-versed in bilingual profanity.
There’s also things out of Rahm’s control that could heighten the senses even more. He’s under contract with LIV for the near future, but the league is in serious jeopardy after losing funding from the Saudi Arabia PIF.
Prior to LIV Golf Virginia, Rahm acknowledged he’s in a tough spot, with the uncertainty of LIV moving forward.
“I’ll say I’m also not a lawyer. I have no idea. I couldn’t tell you. I have very few talents in my life, and reading a contract or business are not two of them,” he said earlier in May. “Again, like you just said, as of right now, I have several years on my contract left, and I’m pretty sure they did a pretty good job when they drafted that. So I don’t see many ways out, and as of right now, I’m not really thinking about it since we still have a season to play and majors to compete for. So it’s not something I want to think about just yet.”
It’s possible Rahm could shake free from that contract — although it doesn’t sound like there are many outs — but even if he did, it might be difficult to get back on the PGA Tour. His former Tour doesn’t seem like it’s in a rush to welcome back LIV defectors, although Rahm has the sort of talent for which they could make an exception.
It probably doesn’t help that the on-course performance hasn’t been good at the biggest tournaments. Rahm was uncompetitive at the Masters with just three top-10 finishes in majors since the start of the 2024 season.
Jon Rahm Outburst Led to Unusual Incident at PGA Championship