LIV stars ‘not part of game anymore’
Golf icon Jack Nicklaus sent a note of congratulations to Brooks Koepka after he became the first LIV golfer to win a major with victory at the PGA Championship two weeks ago.
But that was the only time Koepka and his fellow LIV rebels, including reigning British Open champ Cam Smith, were front of mind for Nicklaus, who boldly declared Greg Norman’s cohort are not “part of the game anymore”.
Nicklaus is hosting the $30m Memorial in Ohio this week, an event boasting the best players in the world, going by the world rankings at least, with seven of the top 10 involved.
But when asked about who wasn’t playing, namely Koepka, Nicklaus was blunt in his attitude towards the LIV players.
“I don’t even consider those guys part of the game anymore,” he said. “I don’t mean that in a nasty way. This is a PGA Tour event and we have the best field we can possibly have for a PGA Tour event for those who are eligible to be here. The other guys made a choice of what they did and where they’ve gone and we don’t even talk about it.”
Nicklaus has only wiped the LIV players from a PGA Tour perspective, however. He confirmed as many as seven LIV players are members of the Bears Club, the private club he built in South Florida, and all have had their membership renewed and remain active at the club. “It’s just where they chose to play golf,” Nicklaus said. “I wish them all well.”
Nicklaus, who rebuked an early approach from LIV officials to be a frontman for the tour, now run by Norman, conceded the emergence of a competitor “probably spurred the PGA Tour”. “I don’t think there’s any question about that, either, to move it to greater heights,” he said.