29 February 2024 , 15:18
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LIV Golf has been urged to reprimand reigning champion Talor Gooch after his sour Rory McIlroy comments in the wake of being snubbed for The Masters.
The American won LIV's 2023 season title after winning three times on the breakaway tour, but he will not be at Augusta National last month after plummeting down the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) since turning his back on the PGA Tour.
With no major championship wins to his name and no OWGR points on offer in LIV events, his only hope of earning a place at The Masters was through a special invitation, reserved for players Augusta National believes are deserving of playing the tournament but have not qualified.
LIV star Joaquin Niemann was among three players to receive invitations, alongside Thorbjorn Olesen and Ryo Hisatsune. Gooch, 32, responded bitterly in an interview with Australian Golf Digest, saying: “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. It’s just the reality.”
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Gooch– whose peak world ranking was 31 before reaching a new low of 449 this week – has never finished higher in a major than tied for 14th and he was widely ridiculed for his comments, with the majority of LIV's best players in the field for The Masters.
Six-time PGA Tour winner Rocco Mediate responded to Gooch's comments in ruthless passion, suggesting LIV Golf's bosses should confront the Oklahoma native about his comments.
“To say something about Rory, are you kidding me? Are you absolutely kidding me? It’s embarrassing. LIV should be going, ‘Dude, you need to shut up, just shut up, we’ll handle this’," Mediate told SiriusXM.
Rocco Mediate was having none of Talor Gooch's "asterisk" comments (David Berding/Getty Images)“So if Rory wins The Masters there should be an asterisk, I wonder why that is? Everybody that belongs in The Masters, all the past champions that are on LIV are playing. Is it because he’s not in? What has he ever done? What has he ever done?
“The fact that he was the best player on LIV last year is an embarrassment. Fact. So, he’s won one tournament on the PGA Tour.
"Does that mean he can count that whenever the hell that was? No one cares. So please, he just needs to be quiet, go about his business, take all his money. Just stop it."
Four-time major champion McIlroy, however, gave Gooch "the benefit of the doubt" over his comments. Speaking ahead of his first round at the Cognizant Classic in Florida, the Northern Irishman said: "'The Masters is an invitational and they'll invite whoever they think warrants an invite.
'I think to be fair to Talor, if you read the entire - the question and then the answer, it's not as if he just came out with that.
"I 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. He just agreed with what the interviewer asked.'