LIV golfers were stuck in a war zone. They came out with the help of Jon Rahm

Seven LIV golfers and a caddy who were stranded in the war-torn Middle East earlier this week left safely for Hong Kong Wednesday morning local time on a private plane paid for by their LIV stablemate Jon Rahm, a source close to the situation told GOLF.com.

The players – Caleb Surratt and Tom McKibbin, who play in Rahm’s Legion XIII team, as well as Thomas Detry, Sam Horsfield, Anirban Lahiri, Adrian Meronk, Lee Westwood and caddy Terry Mundy – were stuck in Dubai, where airports were closed and flights were canceled after retaliation by the United Arab Emirates, Israel and Iran’s attack.

A number of players have homes in Dubai and were trying to get to Hong Kong for this week’s LIV event, which starts on Thursday. But leaving Dubai became a challenge when the city was under siege by Iranian planes. “It was very scary,” Surratt told the Golf Channel, referring to the scene in Dubai at the weekend, when the unrest was at its height. “But since then, it’s been going well. It wasn’t good on Sunday and Monday here with the arrows being blocked.”

LIV Golf itself was looking at various ways to get its players out, the source said, including a plan to transfer the team to London. “LIV did a good job of trying to get everyone out of there,” the source said. (LIV officials declined to comment for this story.) But Rahm was also working for his stations, and his bid — to charter a private jet from neighboring Oman — offered the most direct route to Hong Kong.

“Do whatever you have to do, but get them out of there,” Rahm’s source told his Legion XIII colleagues.

Rahm and his team planned the flight through Rahm’s partnership with private airline VistaJet, the source said. The program was officially launched during the opening of the airport in Muscat, the capital of Oman, on Tuesday morning local time. (The eighth LIV player, Laurie Canter, was also in Dubai, but a source said Canter made her own plans to fly herself and her family out of Oman.)

The first step was to get out of the UAE, which required ground transportation. The source said that Lahiri, who lives in Dubai, was the one who led the convoy of the car that took them to the UAE-Oman border. The 280-kilometer trip from Dubai to Muscat takes about four and a half hours but, the source said, “it turned out to be very long because so many people were trying to do the same thing, so the traffic and the number of people crossing the border, it just backed up everything.”

When the players arrived at the border, they transferred their bags and sticks to the bus that took them to the airport in Muscat where their plane was waiting for them on the busy tarmac.

After a refueling delay, the plane took off at 12:02 am local time on Wednesday and landed in Hong Kong about eight hours later, at 11:19 am local time, which left the players before 24 hours to get used to and prepare for the third LIV event of the season. All eight players who flew in from Oman are on the tee page and are expected to play.