LIV Golfs top earner has pocketed $65M but still | Golf News

Talor Gooch has loved great success on the LIV Golf circuit, but the 33-year-old was shut out of all 4 PGA Tour majors this yr.

After leaping ship to the Saudi-backed league and giving up his PGA Tour membership in 2022, Gooch has risen to turn into LIV Golf’s top money winner.

The following yr, he captured three victories in Adelaide, Singapore, and Spain while claiming the 2023 LIV Golf Individual Championship – a crown price an further $18 million payday.

Just last month, Gooch notched another first-place end at the LIV Golf Andalucia event, pushing his complete earnings on the profitable circuit to $65,899,530 heading into this week’s Indianapolis event.

Yet despite his exceptional achievements over the past three years, Gooch was barred from competing in any of this yr’s major championships due to his Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) standing.

He at present languishes in 1766th place since he can’t accumulate rating factors while taking part in for LIV Golf.

During a dialog with Australian Golf Digest last February, Gooch voiced optimism that the PGA Tour would abandon utilizing the OWGR for major championship qualification.

“Hopefully, the day will turn when the majors decide to start rewarding good play on LIV. Hopefully that’ll be sooner than later,” he remarked at the time.

As long as he and fellow LIV Golf gamers remained excluded from the majors, Gooch contended, golf’s most prestigious achievements would carry an “asterisk” alongside them. “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,” Gooch said.

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“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.”

McIlroy, for one, was hardly bothered by Gooch’s assertion, replying: “The asterisk, look, The Masters is an invitational, and they’ll invite whoever they think warrants an invite.

“To be truthful to Talor, if you read the complete – the query and then the reply – it isn’t as if he just got here out with that. I really feel like whoever did the interview led him down that path to say that, so I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt there a little bit.”

Twelve months following Gooch’s daring remarks, McIlroy barely held off Justin Rose in a sudden-death playoff at Hole 18 of Augusta National to declare victory in his eleventh bid at finishing the profession Grand Slam – an achievement that only Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods have pulled off in the Masters period.

Gooch, meanwhile, tried to qualify for the 2025 U.S. Open one month after McIlroy’s Masters victory, but pulled out 15 holes into the ultimate qualifying spherical at Bent Tree Country Club in Dallas, Texas.