Champ to ‘run my own race’
Morgan hopes circuits can coexist
DEFENDING Australian PGA champion Jed Morgan has called for Europe’s DP World Tour and LIV Golf to “coexist" to allow him to play events on both circuits next year.
Morgan has returned to Royal Queensland this week in an attempt to win back-toback Australian PGA championships after his careerchanging victory in January.
The win helped him finish on top of the Australasian PGA Tour order of merit and secured him a DP World Tour playing card for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons.
Not having that card until this week’s start of the new season allowed Morgan to play this year on Greg Norman’s Saudi-backed LIV circuit without fear of repercussions.
However, that may change next year if DP World Tour officials threaten players with bans if they contest LIV’s expanded 2023 program, which includes an event in Adelaide in April.
“I’m just thankful for everything that happened with the LIV stuff, and … I’m obviously going to take up my Europe card as well,” said Queenslander Morgan, who turns 23 next week.
“If both worlds can coexist, that’d be awesome in the future, but we’ll see. I’m just trying to focus on whatever I can do to get better and run my own race.”
Morgan admitted to feeling the pressure of being in a “dog eat dog world” this year and competing against the world’s best players in the US and British Opens and on the LIV tour.
It led to some poor form that he’s glad to have overcome. “The pressure I’ve had to deal with this year has been pressure I’ve never really felt,” he said. “Feeling what I felt through the middle (of the year) when I was struggling a bit definitely ramped everything up.
“I was in a big pool of fish and I'd never really been in that pool before. Some guys can handle it straightaway and I didn’t quite handle it the way I wanted to, but looking back, I wouldn’t change anything for what I went through and how I feel now about myself and my golf game.
“I just leant on a lot of people that were around me, more so than anything, and just tried to put one foot in front of the other.”
Among those to have given advice to Morgan were fellow LIV golfers Cam Smith and Marc Leishman, who, along with the likes of Adam Scott, Lucas Herbert, Min Woo Lee, Scott Hend and Greg Chalmers, are part of this week’s field at Royal Queensland.