Jon Rahm willing to back LIV Golf switch to 72 holes to help unify game of golf

Rahm is preparing to defend the Masters title he won last year while still plying his trade on the PGA Tour, shortly before he made a sensational switch to the Saudi-backed breakaway tour.

The Spaniard's surprise shift in allegiance is one of the major talking points heading into this week's tournament at Augusta, but Rahm hopes the game's various factions can come together and find a workable solution before too long and is happy for LIV to make concessions with regards to its format if it would help speed things along.

The fact that LIV Golf tournaments are played over 54 holes and not 72 is one of the major reasons why players are not awarded rankings points on the LIV circuit.

"If there ever was a way where LIV could go to 72 holes I think it would help all of this argument a lot," Rahm told BBC Sport.

"The closer I think we can get LIV Golf to some other things the better. I think it would be for some kind of unification to feed into a world tour or something like that.

"I don't know if I'm alone in this, but I definitely wouldn't mind going back to 72 holes."

Rahm acknowledges that his decision to switch allegiances was a seismic shift in the world of golf and the Spaniard admitted it was probably a significant "tipping point" in the ongoing battle, something he was well aware of at the time.

"I understood the weight that [my] decision could have and the impact it could have. I understood that perfectly and that's why it wasn't an easy decision," he said.

"The balance of golf could be disturbed a little bit. Luckily in my career, especially last year, I accomplished a lot and I got to be one of the bigger names in golf.

"There are few active players that could have had a bigger impact than myself in that sense. Not to be patting myself on the back too much, but I understood the position I was in."

Rahm also revealed that it was the announcement of a 'framework agreement' between the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) and the PGA and DP World Tours - which caught him and many other PGA Tour players by surprise - that prompted his decision to accept LIV's 500 million euro offer.

"I was not happy," he said. "At the US Open trying to deal with something like that wasn't perfect timing.

"What we need to reflect on is the second that framework agreement was worked on, everything changed.

"And that's where the beginning of all this change happened. If it wasn't me (making the move) it would have been someone else at some point.

"If the PGA Tour is now open to working with the PIF or LIV or maybe coming together in some kind of way then that opened the door for me to do the same thing."