10 May 2023 , 21:53
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LIV Golf rebels will do battle with PGA loyalists in the PGA Championship, with top stars such as Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, and Brooks Koepka all set to compete, while 5-time major winner Tiger Woods misses out through injury.
The entry list for the major at Oak Hill Country Club between May 18 and May 21, was released on Wednesday and the PGA have not deviated from their tradition of inviting players from the top 100 in the Official World Golf Ranking, despite the ongoing feud with the Saudi-backed breakaway tour.
Joining Mickelson, Johnson, and Koepka are Abraham Ancer, Dean Burmester, Paul Casey, Bryson DeChambeau, Talor Gooch, Martin Kaymer, Sihwan Kim, Anirban Lahiri, Joaquin Niemann, Mito Pereira, Thomas Pieters, Patrick Reed, Cameron Smith, Brendan Steele, and Harold Varner III, all of whom defected to LIV Golf.
The same number of LIV rebels competed at The Masters at Augusta last month. Jon Rahm flew the flag for the PGA at Augusta, winning The Masters while holding off LIV defectors Koepka and Mickelson.
Koepka is hoping to carry the form he showed in the Masters into future majors, and is confident he can add to his four wins. "I’ve known this for a while, but I guess it was just a matter of going out and doing it,” he said.
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Brooks Koepka wants to carry his Augusta momentum into future majors (Getty)"I led for three rounds and just didn’t do it on the last day, that’s it. Plain and simple. Eventually, this will be a positive. I’d say probably give it a week and I’ll start to see some positives out of it and carry this over to the PGA, the US Open, and The Open."
Golf icon Woods, meanwhile, will miss out. The 47-year-old pulled out of the Masters during the third round in April, saying at the time it was due to plantar fasciitis - but then had a subtalar fusion procedure in New York to address the problem caused by a previous fracture of his talus, a bone in the ankle joint.
Woods had not long before staged an epic comeback to golf following a horror February 2021 car crash which left him fearing amputation of one of his legs.