LIV Golf’s Talor Gooch makes preposterous Rory McIlroy claim

Talor Gooch has had a successful run on LIV Golf.

He has won three events on the Saudi-backed circuit and lost to Brooks Koepka in a playoff in another.

Meanwhile, Gooch has championed LIV Golf’s cause while disparaging the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR), which does not award points to LIV Golf events.

As such, Gooch’s OWGR ranking has tumbled so significantly that he will not receive an invitation from Augusta National to compete in this year’s Masters Tournament.

Still, many of the top players in the world will be there, including Rory McIlroy and a host of LIV players, such as Koepka, Joaquin Niemann, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, and Cam Smith.

But that did not hold Gooch back from making a preposterous claim when speaking with Australian Golf Digest.

“If McIlroy goes and completes his Grand Slam without some of the best players in the world, there’s just going to be an asterisk,” Gooch said.

“It’s just the reality. I think everybody wins whenever the majors figure out a way to get the best players in the world there.”

The OWGR does not award LIV Golf ranking points because of its competition format and its team aspect. Players who signed up for LIV knew what they were getting into and the risks involved, and yet they continue to complain about the lack of recognition from the OWGR.

“This decision not to make them eligible is not political. It is entirely technical,” said Peter Dawson, the OWGR board chair, in October.

“LIV players are self-evidently good enough to be ranked. They’re just not playing in a format where they can be ranked equitably with the other 24 tours and thousands of players trying to compete on them.”

LIV Golf features 54-hole events, shotgun starts, no cuts, and just a 48-man field—unlike most professional events around the world. Their process of qualification and relegation also drew concern from the OWGR board, hence the decision not to award points.

And yet, LIV players continue to pile on.

“I think the Official World Golf Ranking has got itself into a real hole,” said Lee Westwood, another LIV player, per Australian Golf Digest.

“It’s got itself to a point where it’s obsolete, if I’m being completely honest. It’s managed to be so stubborn that it no longer ranks all the best golfers in the world fairly. And it’s gone so far that I don’t see how it can come back from the hole that it’s in because you can’t backdate them.”

Instead of using the OWGR, many pundits and fans alike have turned to DataGolf as a more accurate representation of rankings. DataGolf uses analytics and strokes-gained metrics to compute rankings, and right now, that platform has Gooch ranked 40th.

As No Laying Up pointed out, only Gooch, Beau Hossler, Christian Bezuidenhout, Rasmus Højgaard, and Stephan Jaeger are within the top 50 of these rankings and not eligible for the Masters.

But should McIlroy win at Augusta, it would be viewed upon with raised eye-brows, per Gooch.

Indeed, the season’s first major of the year features the smallest and weakest field of the four majors. It comprises the top 50 players in the OWGR, top amateurs, and past champions who still wish to compete. Any player who has won a major within the past five years also receives invitations.

Typically, the field at Augusta hovers around 90 players, almost twice the amount seen at LIV Golf events.

But Gooch, despite his lack of major championship success, made these comments in the first place because he feels like he got snubbed.

His best finish at The Masters was a tie for 14th two years ago. He also made the cut last year, tying for 34th.

Those two tournaments, along with a tie for 20th at the 2022 PGA Championship, are his three best finishes in majors. He has only played in 11 of them, missing four cuts.

And yet, Gooch feels that if McIlroy goes on to win his first Green Jacket this April, an asterisk will have to be pinned on the front of his blazer.

Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThrough for more golf coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko as well.