LIV Golf ‘gossip’ steals the show leading up to U.S. Open

The divide in professional golf grew bigger this week in the lead-up to the 122nd U.S. Open.

On one side are the Rory McIlroys and Jay Monahans — unabashedly against the breakaway LIV Golf Invitational Series. Opposite them are Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and the 15 other PGA Tour defectors who cashed in massive paydays from the Saudi-backed tour and played in LIV Golf’s inaugural event last weekend. 

In the middle is everyone else: the fans who simply want to see the best golfers face off against each other, and the players who would rather talk about their short game than Greg Norman, Saudi Arabia or the controversy surrounding the new league

Well, the intrigue (and the ire) of LIV Golf doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, and this week proved that. Leading up to one of the sport’s four majors — a premier event meant solely to display the best golf in the world — all the talk is about a tournament that ended six days ago and was streamed on YouTube. 

“I’m tired of the conversations. I’m tired of all this stuff,” said Brooks Koepka, whose brother, Chase, played in the LIV opener. “Y’all are throwing a black cloud on the U.S. Open. I think that sucks. I actually do feel bad for the [USGA] for once because it’s a s——— situation. We’re here to play, and you are talking about an event that happened last week.”

Justin Thomas is also sick of talking about the LIV Golf tour. 

“You can’t go anywhere without somebody bringing it up,” said Thomas, a two-time major champion. “This is the U.S. Open, and this is an unbelievable venue, a place with so much history, an unbelievable field, so many storylines, and yet that seems to be what all the questions are about. That’s not right for the U.S. Open. That’s not right for us players. But that’s, unfortunately, where we’re at right now.”

But some golfers were happy to talk about the LIV Golf tour, created as a potential rival to the PGA Tour and backed by the Saudi Arabian government’s sovereign wealth fund.

McIlroy, one of the loudest critics of the new league, said he understood why Mickelson, Johnson and company chose to spurn the nearly 100-year-old PGA Tour and join the LIV Golf series. According to multiple reports, Mickelson received about $200 million to join the new tour, while Johnson got $125 million — two astronomically high numbers that surpass even the career earnings of Tiger Woods on the PGA Tour. 

But McIlroy, who finished first in last weekend’s RBC Canadian Open for his 21st win on the PGA Tour — ironically surpassing Norman for career victories — also said the defectors were “taking the easy way out,” adding that most of those golfers’ “best days are behind them.” McIlroy is the betting favorite to win the U.S. Open, which he first won in 2011. The 33-year-old is a four-time major champion, but he hasn’t hoisted one of the four main trophies since 2014. 

Mickelson, one of the 17 former PGA Tour players who competed at the Centurion Club in London last weekend, has kept a relatively low profile at The Country Club just outside of Boston this week. He hasn’t stirred controversy with his comments like he did earlier this year when he said the Saudi government were “scary motherf———” and that he was willing to overlook the country’s human rights abuses in order to gain leverage over the PGA Tour.

Mickelson, along with Johnson and a handful of other players, is allowed to play in the U.S. Open despite being indefinitely suspended from the PGA Tour because the major championship is governed by the USGA, not the PGA. This weekend will be Lefty’s 31st U.S. Open, and it is the only major he’s never won. 

USGA CEO Mike Whan said the organization chose to allow the suspended players to participate in the U.S. Open because he didn’t want to make a “knee-jerk reaction” based on the rapidly changing events of the past few weeks. But he also didn’t rule out the possibility of the players being barred from competing in future U.S. Opens. 

“I’m saddened by what’s happening in the professional game,” Whan said. “I’ve heard that this is good for the game. At least from my outside view right now, it looks like it’s good for a few folks playing the game, but I’m struggling with how this is good for the game.”

But as two-time major champion Collin Morikawa realizes despite being just 25 years old, the talk about the LIV Golf tour, the PGA’s punishments and the large dollar amounts being thrown around is just the golf world’s version of “gossip.” And it’s not going to stop any time soon. 

“This has been such a big distraction,” Morikawa said. “It’s enjoyable to talk about it because we all like gossip, right? We all like the drama.”