LOS ANGELES — Jon Rahm was at home in Scottsdale, Ariz., making breakfast and taking care of his two young sons last Tuesday morning when he heard his phone buzz.

Then it buzzed again.

And again.

That deluge of texts from friends and colleagues was how the world’s second-ranked golfer learned his sport was about to undergo seismic change. The rest of the golf world discovered at the same time Rahm did that the PGA Tour and LIV Golf had sheathed their swords and laid the groundwork for an unlikely partnership.

Rahm said that he received so many messages that morning that he feared his phone “was going to catch on fire.” At one point, he remembers telling his wife Kelley, “I'm just going to throw my phone in the drawer and not look at it for the next four hours because I can't deal with this anymore.”

It wasn’t just Rahm who was kept in the dark when PGA Tour officials began negotiating in secrecy with the Saudi-backed breakaway LIV Golf circuit. The surprise alliance blindsided top players who accepted vast sums of money to join LIV Golf and those who turned down lucrative offers out of loyalty to the PGA Tour and ethical concerns about Saudi Arabia’s history of human rights violations.