Talor Gooch can’t stop putting his foot in his mouth.
The 32-year-old who compared a LIV Golf event to the Ryder Cup — despite having never played for Team USA — is back to commenting off the cuff, this time about Rory McIlroy and the Masters.
“If Rory McIlroy goes and completes his (career) Grand Slam without some of the best players in the world, there’s just going to be an asterisk. It’s just the reality,” Gooch told Australian Golf Digest. “I think everybody wins whenever the majors figure out a way to get the best players in the world there.”
Had he just said the last part of his quote, Gooch would be right. The majors have weaker fields without some LIV players. But does that mean his colleague Jon Rahm’s 2023 Masters win has an asterisk? Do Gooch’s three LIV Golf wins also have asterisks because the majority of the best players in the world aren’t in LIV events?
Last year LIV had 18 players in the Masters. As of now, it looks like they’ll have 13 in this year’s tournament at Augusta National, including the majority of the league’s best players like Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Cam Smith, Phil Mickelson, Tyrrell Hatton and Joaquin Niemann (who received a special exemption last week).
“I think the majors have kind of shown that they’re not getting on board with LIV,” Gooch said. “(Niemann) went outside of LIV and played some great golf and they rewarded him for that. So hopefully the day will turn when the majors decide to start rewarding good play on LIV. Hopefully that’ll be sooner than later.”
Gooch has beef with the majors that dates back to last year when he was robbed of a spot in the U.S. Open, but LIV’s 2023 season-long individual champion lost a leg to stand on when he then didn’t fight for a spot via open qualifying. As for his lack of a Masters invite, Gooch has fallen to No. 449 in the world ranking and, unlike Niemann, hasn’t attempted to pick up points in events outside of LIV (not to mention his massive faux pas at his Masters debut in 2022).
Gooch had a fair point he was trying to make on LIV players and the majors, he just needed to think it through a bit more.