Several LIV Golf League players will attempt to make the U.S. Open field via final qualifying next month.
Talor Gooch won’t be one of them.
The top player on LIV Golf in 2023 who won three times and captured the season-long points race said during a news conference in Singapore on Thursday that he would not be taking part.
He did not give a reason.
Gooch appeared alongside Smash GC teammates Brooks Koepka, Graeme McDowell and Jason Kokrak, and they were all asked if they would attempt to qualify for the U.S. Open, which will conduct 36-hole qualifiers around the country on May 3.
Both McDowell and Kokrak said they would not only attempt to qualify for the U.S. Open, but for the British Open as well—which will have final qualifying two weeks prior to the championship.
🏆🇺🇸 World #624 Talor Gooch on if he plans to play in a U.S. Open qualifying event: “I’m not.”
A total of 35 players from LIV are scheduled to play in final qualifying. Koepka, a two-time major winner and the reigning PGA champion, is exempt.
Gooch simply said: “I’m not.” And offered no explanation.
The one-time PGA Tour winner has been outspoken about not being included in the major championships.
Last year, he earned his way into the Masters and the British Open having finished in the top 30 in the 2022 PGA Tour FedEx Cup standings. But Gooch was miffed that the U.S. Open changed its rules to state that the same exemption would only go to a player “eligible” for the season-ending Tour Championship. Having gone to LIV Golf, Gooch was not eligible.
Earlier this year, Gooch made headlines when he said: “If Rory McIlroy goes and completes his (career) Grand Slam without some of the best players in the world, there is just going to be an asterisk. It’s just the reality.”
LIV Golf does not receive Official World Golf Ranking points for its events and many of its players have plummeted in the rankings while not earning points. Gooch, who was top 50 in the world around this time last year, has sunk to 624th in the OWGR. He is ranked 41st by Data Golf, which includes LIV tournaments.
He tied for 34th at the Masters last year and then missed the cut at the PGA Championship. He did not attempt to qualify for the U.S. Open and then missed the cut at The Open.
Gooch has no victories so far this year with LIV Golf but does have three top 10s. He is the defending champion of this week’s event in Singapore.
Among the LIV golfers scheduled to compete in final qualifying for the U.S. Open are Sergio Garcia, Patrick Reed and Henrik Stenson.
Brooks Koepka became the first player to win four times as part of the LIV Golf League, shooting a final-round 68 at Sentosa Golf Club in Singapore on Sunday to beat Cam Smith and Marc Leishman by two strokes.
His timing wasn’t bad, either.
A few days after offering concern about his game in light of a poor Masters performance, Koepka stepped up and won the LIV Golf Singapore even to give himself a boost heading into the defense of his PGA Championship title in two weeks.
The year’s second major begins on May 16.
“It’s all starting to come around,” said Koepka, who last year won his fifth major title when he captured the PGA at Oak Hill, becoming the first active LIV golfer to win a major. “I like the way things are trending.’’
They didn’t seem to be trending well just a few days ago when Koepka made clear he was not happy with his tie for 45th at the Masters. “I felt like I wasted all that time from January up until then,’’ he said.
He tied for 10th at the LIV Golf event in Adelaide the week prior and heading into the Singapore tournament that he simply needed to get putts to drop.
“I’ve put in a lot of work,’’ he said. “I feel like on the golf course, off the golf course, it’s been a good two weeks, to say the least. Take a week off and then grinding pretty hard with (instructor) Claude (Harmon) over the last few days, I thought that was very important. Kind of started to see it turn maybe Wednesday, Thursday of Adelaide, so to see it pay off here is huge.”
Koepka won his third PGA Championship Wanamaker Trophy last year. In each of his first four major victories, he won back-to-back at the 2017 and ’18 U.S. Opens and the 2018 and ’19 PGAs.
After a second-round 64, Koepka started the final round with a three-shot lead over Abraham Ancer, Adrian Meronk, Thomas Pieters and Mathew Wolff. He never relinquished his lead, although several challengers closed the gap at times.
“I felt the heat, but it was mainly because of how hot it was,” Koepka said. “Just played very consistent, missed it in the right spots. When you're playing with a lead, you do that. You don't have to force anything.”
Smith and Leishman were part of the winning Ripper GC team, capturing the team title for the second straight week.
DUBLIN, Ohio — Rory McIlroy considered heading to New York following the second round of the Memorial Tournament on Friday but will instead take part via video conference in the first in-person meeting of the PGA Tour’s transaction committee and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.
Saying that players Tiger Woods, Adam Scott and himself will be more in the background because “this is big boy stuff,” McIlroy said it is about the PIF—which backs LIV Golf—and a possible investment in PGA Tour Enterprises and what that could mean for the future of the men’s professional game.
And as part of that, McIlroy believes that LIV Golf will continue to operate, regardless of how a deal might look.
“I certainly don’t see in the next couple of years LIV slowing down,” McIlroy told a small group of reporters following an opening-round 70 at Muirfield Village Golf Club. “They’re buying office space in New York. They have over 200 employees. I don’t see a world where—and I haven’t heard any of those guys say that they don’t want to play over there either, right? You’ve got guys who are on contracts until 2028, 2029.
“Looking a few years down the line, LIV is going to continue to sort of keep going down its path. But hopefully with maybe more of a collaboration or an understanding between the tours. Maybe there is some cross-pollenation there where players can start to play on both. I guess that will all be talked about in the coming weeks.”
McIlroy along with Woods and Scott were named last month to a “transaction committee” that is to deal directly with the PIF as part of a plan to get investment in the new PGA Enterprises and bring peace to the game.
The others on the committee are PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan; former Tour player and board liaison Joe Ogilvie; Joe Gorder, who is an executive with Valero Energy and the chairman of PGA Tour Enterprises; and John Henry, a principal with Fenway Sports Group and part of the Strategic Sports Group, which earlier this year invested $1.5 billion in PGA Tour Enterprises.
The group is meeting in New York on Friday afternoon with the PIF, including its governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan.
McIlroy said the transaction committee has met a few times amongst themselves and every Monday, Wednesday and Friday with representatives of the PIF for the last few weeks.
It’s been a year since the “framework agreement” was announced, with no deal made and plenty of conjecture back and forth. The SSG commitment stalled talks with the PIF, but seemingly have resumed with plenty of ground to cover.
“There’s going to be people in that room on the PGA Tour side who are going to take the lead,” McIlroy said. “And it’s not going to be Adam, Tiger or I. That’s going to be Jay, Joe Gorder, Joe Ogilvie, John Henry. It’s going to be the business guys. We’re there to maybe give a perspective from a player’s point of view.
“This is a negotiation about an investment in the PGA Tour Enterprises, this is big boy stuff. And I’ll certainly be doing more listening than I will be doing talking.”
McIlroy said it is unknown at this point what PIF’s role might be going forward.
“I think depending on what the DOJ (the U.S. Department of Justice) allows, it might have to be a very passive investment,” McIlroy said. “I don’t know what’s in their head. I don’t know if that is something that they are willing to do. We’ll find out.”
McIlroy added: “There’s a lot of stuff that goes beyond my knowledge and expertise in terms of the investment side of things. And certainly the regulatory side of things as well. We’re on this transaction committee to sort of give a perspective from a player. But that’s going to be a conversation between SSG and the executives of the Tour.”
Asked if he believes the PIF—which was attempting to get into golf long before LIV Golf was launched—is looking at PGA Tour Enterprises as something aside from its LIV investment, McIlroy said:
“First and foremost, Yasir is the governor of the PIF and the chairman of Aramco (Saudi Arabia’s lucrative oil company). Those are the two titles that he holds. His biggest thing is making returns on his investments and to do good by the Kingdom. That’s his whole purpose in what he is doing. If he thinks that investing in PGA Tour Enterprises is a good investment and he can make return on his money and also get a seat at the table, as it were, he may see that as a win.”
McIlroy noted that collaboration going forward is tricky. The DOJ rejected original language in the framework agreement which said LIV Golf could not poach players from the PGA Tour. “It was anti-competitive; antitrust,” McIlroy said.
That, and so many other things, make for a complicated situation, he said.
“My stance on some of the LIV stuff has softened,” McIlroy said. “They’re contracted to play 14 events, but the other 38 weeks of the year you’re free to do what you want.
“The only thing is there are so many tours and so many golf tournaments. There are only a certain amount of weeks in the year. That’s the complicated part. Trying to figure out which tournaments go where, when do we play them, how many players, what players.”
With his PGA Championship title defense looming, Brooks Koepka is searching for the game that saw him win a fifth major championship last year at Oak Hill Country Club.
He didn’t sound extremely confident during a news conference Thursday in advance of the LIV Golf Singapore event, which begins Friday morning (9:15 p.m. ET Thursday).
“Clearly not very good,” Koepka said when asked how his game was trending in advance of the PGA at Valhalla, which begins May 16. “With Augusta the way that it went, I kind of felt like I wasted all the time from December until then. Just keep grinding away, keep doing the work, and hopefully something will turn around.”
Brooks Koepka shot four over-par rounds at the Masters and finished T45.
Michael Madrid, Michael Madrid / USA
Koepka was referring to the Masters, where he tied for 45th and was never really in the tournament after tying for second last year. He opened with a 73 and added rounds of 73, 76 and 75.
That came after weekend rounds of 78-78 in LIV’s event in Miami the weekend prior.
Koepka lamented his putting, which caused a putter switch a few weeks back. Although he tied for 19th in the putting stats at Augusta National, he believes that’s been the main source of his trouble.
He switched to a mallet putter recently.
“It’s been in the bag two weeks before Augusta, I haven’t even putted with that other putter, the one I’ve putted with for—the button back I’ve probably putted with for 12, 14 years, I haven’t putted with it since then,” he said.
“I can’t find the hole at all, to be honest with you. Something we’ve just been putting some work into, so trying to find some answers.”
Asked what the main issue is, Koepka said: “Ball doesn’t go in the hole, that’s usually one of them. I don’t know how else to simply put it. I feel like I’m hitting good putts, they just keep burning lips. Eventually it starts to wear on you after a while. All you can do is hit a good putt and see where it goes from there. Hopefully they start falling soon.”
In six LIV Golf events so far this year, Koepka has only been on the fringe of contention, with two top 10s, including a tie for 10th on Sunday in Adelaide.
