Letter from PGA Championship: LIV has much more at stake than it did at the Masters

BIG PHIL: Phil Mickelson watches his tee shot on the second hole during a practice round for the PGA Championship. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

LIV Golf made quite a meal of its stout showing last month in the Masters. Placing three players among the top six finishers – co-runnerups Brooks Koepka and Phil Mickelson as well as Patrick Reed in a tie for fourth – has been a major bragging point for golf’s breakaway rebels fighting for relevancy on the game’s biggest stages.

The continued whining about the lack of Official World Golf Ranking points and access to major championships hit crescendo in recent weeks as LIV traipsed from Australia to Singapore to Tulsa, Oklahoma since the Masters. The chief screamer has been Mickelson, who caught lightning in a bottle to win the 2021 PGA at Kiawah a month shy of his 51st birthday and made a spirited run at a fourth green jacket last month at age 52.

First Mickelson lashed out at the USGA for a qualification exemption clarification it made back in February requiring players to be eligible to utilize the Tour Championship criteria to get into the 2023 U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club. That change might keep LIV’s hottest star, Talor Gooch, from getting into next month’s U.S. Open unless he plays well enough this week in the PGA Championship to move back into the top-60 spot in the OWGR.

Mickelson blasted USGA CEO Mike Whan in a since deleted tweet: “Total dick move by Whan. He leads our governing body. Sad.” Last week, Mickelson took to Twitter again to criticize the PGA Championship for not including a handful of LIV players who have fallen out of the OWGR top 100, accusing the PGA of America with colluding to benefit the PGA Tour.

“Colluding with Tour and against LIV,” he tweeted about the PGA before then aiming his warning shots at both Whan and PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan. “Three years from now who is more likely to still be here? Monahan or LIV? We won’t forget. You too Whan.”

Phil Mickelson will be looking to bring his Masters form into the PGA Championship.

Much of this grousing is based on LIV Golf’s insistence that it deserved to immediately be granted OWGR points without going through the typical application process. There are legitimate concerns about the composition of the OWGR board that makes the determination of what tours qualify for points, but there are also valid concerns about LIV’s 54-hole, no-cut, invitation-only circuit meeting the standards for qualification. Plus, LIV hasn’t even existed for a full calendar year yet.

This week LIV has much more at stake than it did a month ago at the Masters. The withdrawals of Martin Kaymer and Paul Casey leaves only 16 current LIV players in the 156-player field at Oak Hill. That’s only 10 percent of the starters. In the Masters, LIV had 18 of the 87 starters (20 percent).

The Masters was always going to be the easiest major for LIV’s contingent to fare well in, considering it’s already a limited field before even taking into account amateurs and past champions long past their competitive prime to mostly strive just to make the cut. LIV’s contingent was strongly stacked with competitive players with proven experience at Augusta National.

That won’t be the case this week at Oak Hill, where the field includes 99 of the top 100 ranked golfers in the OWGR. LIV’s best players will need to step up further to showcase their talent against a much deeper field on a revamped course few players have any history or familiarity with. Odds are they won’t have as much to crow about when it’s over Sunday unless one of LIV’s finest manages to win the Wanamaker Trophy. A handful are certainly capable of doing just that.

It will be a similar story next month at LACC, where LIV will hope to pad its similar-sized contingent with players willing to get through the final 36-hole qualifying. Gooch did not sign up for U.S. Open qualifying as many of his LIV peers did, even though the USGA had announced its exemption criteria changes long before the deadline to sign up.

It’s been a turbulent month for LIV. Having lost its arbitration battle with the DP World Tour, a host of veteran players have resigned their membership from the European circuit and severed all hopes of being involved with the Ryder Cup team. It was an acrimonious end to some storied careers for European team players such as Lee Westwood, Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter and Henrik Stenson. It leaves gaping wounds on both sides.

U.S. captain Zach Johnson still has options and players like Dustin Johnson (who went 5-0 at Whistling Straits) and Koepka should not be ruled out as picks even if they don’t secure enough points in majors to qualify for the top six automatic spots. Johnson will pick based on form and chemistry, and DJ and Koepka check both boxes better than most.

“Yes, I would definitely like to play in the Ryder Cup,” said Johnson, who won last week’s LIV event in Tulsa. “It's one of my favorite events to play in, especially after the last Ryder Cup.” “It would be awesome to represent the United States … but it’s not at the front of my thoughts,” said Koepka. “If I handle business it will take care of itself.”

The focus for most, however, is squarely on LIV’s access to the major events that mean the most in golf. Every opportunity is precious, and the ever more desperate pleas for inclusion show how vital it is for players and their career legacies.

LIV would do better to let its clubs do the talking as it did at Augusta instead of Mickelson’s Twitter account. It’s put-up-or-shut-up time at Oak Hill, and the stakes are much higher than at Augusta.