Staff WriterLIV Hong Kong produced the sort of Sunday that reminds you why professional golf can still grab a man by the collar. Jon Rahm arrived carrying the burden of 539 days without an individual victory, while Dustin Johnson’s 4Aces GC had gone 974 days without a team win.
By dusk at Hong Kong Golf Club, both droughts had been tossed into the harbour, and neither disappeared quietly.
Rahm was the headline act, as he so often is, finishing off a commanding week with a 6-under 64 to win by three at 23 under. But the team story had just as much crackle.
The 4Aces, once LIV Golf’s standard-bearers and lately more memory than menace, finally looked like themselves again, charging to a six-shot team win over Smash GC.
This was, above all else, a Tournament Recap: one shaped by pressure, timing, shifting momentum and the kind of closing stretch that tells you who has nerve and who merely borrowed it for the weekend.
Jon Rahm turns pressure into control
Rahm did not win this one in a blur. He won it with the sort of deliberate force that makes the game look simpler than it is, which is one of his more irritating gifts to the rest of the field.
The Legion XIII captain began the final round tied for the lead alongside Thomas Detry and Harold Varner III. He birdied four of his first eight holes, gave one back at the ninth, then tightened the screws when it mattered. Through 13 holes, Thomas Pieters was lurking just one behind. It was a proper contest then, not a procession.
Then came the shot that changed the mood. Rahm’s gap wedge from 90 yards at the 14th settled to seven feet. He converted the birdie. At almost the same moment, Pieters bogeyed the 15th.
In tournament golf, that is how a close fight becomes a retreat. By the time Rahm stood on the 18th tee, he had a five-shot cushion and the expression of a man who had finally located the missing piece.
“Very relieving,” said Rahm, the league’s reigning two-time Individual Champion. “That’s the only way I can describe it. I’ve been very ecstatic for wins in the past. This one just feels like a big weight off my shoulder. That’s all I can say.”
That quote says plenty. This was not chest-thumping stuff. It was release. Rahm had finished runner-up in the first two LIV events of the season and had been left stewing after Adelaide, where Anthony Kim came flying past him. In Hong Kong, he looked like a man determined not to leave the door ajar again.
A lesson from Adelaide pays off in LIV Hong Kong
Rahm admitted Adelaide still had a fingerprint on this week. There, he had been tentative. Here, he was committed.
“Compared to Adelaide, I would say I came in with a mindset of just trying to be more committed to each shot,” Rahm said. “I think I was a little tentative on that day. That’s why on that back nine, once I made that putt on 13, my mindset was to birdie them all coming in.”
That is the sort of mindset that sounds obvious until you try it with a title on the line and a hungry leaderboard behind you.
His week, by his own telling, was not exactly smooth. He helped arrange flights for stranded LIV Golf players in the Middle East, then struggled on the range before the opening round. Yet each day sharpened a little, and by Sunday afternoon the blade was gleaming.
“I wish you could have seen my driving exhibition on the first-round range warmup,” Rahm said. “I walked off to that third tee with no clue how I was going to hit it off the tee, and somehow managed to keep it in play and each day got a little bit better. I was not comfortable whatsoever.
“There was a lot going on this week, and I think there was still a little bit of tension in me on that first day. But a friend of mine, his name is David Novak, he says, each day get better, and each day got a little bit better, and today, coming down the stretch, the swings from 13 through 16 were absolutely perfect swings. I think those holes is pretty much peak Jon Rahm that we can see.”
Peak Jon Rahm is a difficult thing to live with if you happen to be anyone else.
4Aces GC finally look like 4Aces GC again
For the team contest at LIV Hong Kong, the 4Aces did not merely win. They resurfaced.
This is a franchise that built the early LIV Golf identity, winning repeatedly in 2022 and 2023 before slipping into a long, odd silence. There had been roster changes, frustration and enough near-misses to make a saint bite through a pencil. But with Thomas Detry and Anthony Kim now alongside Johnson and Pieters, there has been the unmistakable smell of a reboot.
Sunday confirmed it.
Johnson led the way with a 65. Kim and Pieters each posted 66. Detry signed for 67. Together they reached 16 under for the day and 58 under for the tournament, six clear of Smash GC. After consecutive third-place team finishes to open the season, this was the breakthrough they had been hinting at.
“To finally get a win after a few years without having one, very proud of the guys,” Johnson said. “Obviously, we have a completely new team, but I think we have a very strong team. I’m very happy with them.”
Johnson’s own finish left him tied for 24th at 10 under, which tells you something about the scoring conditions and something else about the depth of contribution around him. He still sounded like a man searching for a better version of his own game.
“Obviously I’m still not playing up to my caliber that I feel like I should be,” Johnson said. “It’s very close. But the team is playing great. I think we’ve got four really good players, so I think we’re going to be a tough team to beat all year.”
That sounds less like celebration and more like a warning.
Anthony Kim embraces the team game
Anthony Kim’s role in this LIV Hong Kong story was not as explosive as it had been in Adelaide, where he stormed to an individual win, but it may have been more revealing.
As a former Wild Card player, Kim’s good weeks belonged only to him. Now, his golf has consequences for three teammates as well, and there is a clear bounce in his step because of it. His birdie on the penultimate hole gave the 4Aces the lead for good, and Detry quickly followed with another. It was the sort of one-two finish teams dream about and opponents dread.
“After Adelaide, the first couple days seemed pretty surreal,” Kim said. “Obviously we all play to win, right? But now with LIV Golf, there’s two elements. You get to win with three other guys that you’re battling with. This is pretty special.”
He expanded further on why the fit feels right.
“I felt my game was getting better, and I think I had a couple different teams I could go to,” Kim said. “I didn’t think they were the right fit. I’ve known DJ for a long time, developed a great relationship with Thomas Pieters and got to play with Tom Detry in Riyadh. I knew it was a good fit. I couldn’t be more excited to be on the 4Aces, and for us to pop off a win is nice.”
That is not just sentiment. It is structure. LIV Golf’s team model only works when players actually invest in it, and on Sunday, the 4Aces looked entirely bought in.
Thomas Detry and Thomas Pieters give 4Aces real bite
The Belgian influence on this 4Aces revival is becoming impossible to ignore. Detry finished runner-up at 20 under, while Pieters claimed solo third at 19 under for his first individual podium in LIV Golf. Together, they gave the team a shape and steadiness that has been missing.
Detry’s week had begun in chaos after being stranded in the Middle East before making it to Hong Kong on a private plane arranged by Rahm. He finished it by nearly catching the man who helped get him there.
“The first few days were not really fun,” Detry said. “DJ’s security guy this week was with me this week in the middle of the desert on Monday night, and what we’ve been through was quite an adventure. But being here – my game was in a good place. I’ve been playing some good golf. It’s two weeks now out of three that I’m in contention pretty much because I was up there, as well, in Saudi. It’s really nice to see all the hard work I’ve put in during the winter has really paid off.
“I feel like I can relax now. It was an intense day. I was trying to catch up on Jon, and he played amazingly well. He made some good putts there on the back nine, and I was trying to do everything, but yeah, it was just a really fun day, to be honest. I’m just thrilled.”
Pieters, meanwhile, ran into the old problem of playing superbly only to find Rahm being even better.
“I played very, very good all week,” said Pieters, who produced his first individual podium finish, a solo third. “Obviously I can’t control the fact that Jon is unbelievable at golf.”
It is a fair point. There are defeats, and then there are occasions when the other fellow simply turns up with thunder in his hands.
The leaderboard, the numbers and the shape of the week
The individual leaderboard at LIV Hong Kong had substance from top to bottom. Rahm finished at 23 under, with Detry second on 20 under and Pieters third at 19 under. Harold Varner III, who began Sunday tied for the lead, slipped to fourth at 18 under after a closing 69. Matthew Wolff’s closing 65 earned him fifth at 17 under, a notable step forward after a difficult run.
Carlos Ortiz finished sixth at 16 under, Dean Burmester seventh at 15 under, while Lucas Herbert, Sergio Garcia, Louis Oosthuizen, Elvis Smylie, Graeme McDowell and David Puig were among the group tied for eighth at 14 under.
In the team standings, 4Aces finished first at 58 under, followed by Smash GC at 52 under and Legion XIII at 51 under.
The statistics added texture to an already crowded picture. Detry led the tournament in Strokes Gained Putting at +7.66. Varner made 24 birdies, the most he has recorded in a LIV Golf event. Only one player finished over par for the week, tying the league record for the fewest players over par in a tournament. Southern Guards hit 78.1 percent of fairways, their best mark in any LIV event.
Rahm, meanwhile, extended his streak of consecutive rounds under par to 21, matching the league record he already owned. That is not merely consistency. That is a man living permanently on the agreeable side of par.
What LIV Hong Kong means moving forward
This LIV Hong Kong result matters for both championships.
For Rahm, it removes the only faintly irritating question hanging over his season. He had been playing brilliantly without winning, which is a bit like owning a racehorse that keeps stopping to admire itself fifty yards from the line. Now the victory is in place, and with it comes the sense that his season has aligned with his form.
“It’s very fun when you can stand on that podium and celebrate with your teammates,” Rahm said about Legion XIII’s success since his last win. “But as far as obviously being a competitor and as myself goes, I wanted to get this done. It feels different. I think I would be way more ecstatic if I was celebrating with my teammates for the win, like the Aces did today, but there’s a sense of self-accomplishment and pride that goes with doing it myself.”
For the 4Aces, the implications may be even more interesting. Teams are built on trust, timing and the quiet assumption that somebody will do something useful when your own swing starts behaving like a lawn chair in a gale. This week, all four did.
Johnson looks close. Detry looks immediately comfortable. Pieters looks liberated. Kim looks re-energised. That is a dangerous mixture.
LIV Hong Kong, then, was not simply about one winner or one team victory. It was about two long waits ending on the same afternoon. Rahm walked away lighter. The 4Aces walked away louder. And the rest of the league, one suspects, walked away with a fresh problem.
