By Missing the Cut at the PGA, LIV Golf's Talor Gooch Will Also Miss the U.S. Open
ROCHESTER, N.Y. – An exemption tweak blocked one path to the U.S. Open for Talor Gooch. His play at the PGA Championship took care of the other on Friday.
Gooch, who won back-to-back events in the LIV Golf League last month, shot 74 at Oak Hill Country Club to miss the cut at the PGA Championship, thus missing an opportunity to earn the Official World Golf Ranking points necessary to qualify for next month’s U.S. Open.
"It always sucks when you don’t have your A-game at a major championship," he said after his total of 150, 10 over par, had him headed to the parking lot. "It’s always disappointing.
"Obviously I was hopeful that (making the U.S. Open field) would be the case, but I knew with all the craziness in golf happening right now there might be stuff like this that would happened, so honestly it’s not surprising."
Gooch, 31, found himself amid controversy over the last month as he spoke out against a change the United States Golf Association made to its criteria when announced in February that impacts only him this year.
Previously, the U.S. Open gave exemptions to players who qualified for the PGA Tour’s season-ending Tour Championship. Gooch, by virtue of his play last year, did that, finishing 29th in the final FedEx Cup standings.
But due to his joining LIV Golf, Gooch was suspended from the Tour in June and barred from participating in the FedEx Cup playoffs. Even though he had earned enough points to qualify for the season-ending event, he was not permitted to play.
And that’s where the words mattered. Both the Masters and U.S. Open had working that said those who "qualified" were able to play. Gooch, by virtue of top 50 world ranking at the end of 2022 and the Tour Championship rule, was in the Masters.
But when the USGA announced its criteria in February, the wording had been changed to include not only qualifying for the Tour Championship but being "eligible" for the tournament. Gooch was not eligible, thus not assured of a spot in the U.S. Open field at Los Angeles Country Club.
Gooch was critical of the USGA for changing the wording, as was Phil Mickelson, who accused the organization of "retroactively" changing its rules to hurt Gooch. (The USGA does not announce its criteria until February of each year.)
Making matters worse for Gooch was that he failed to enter final qualifying for the U.S. Open, which will take place in two weeks.
Gooch said the lack of an exemption was among the reasons for skipping qualifying, as was the schedule—although LIV Golf is off after next week until late June.
"If I didn’t qualify via world ranking, I just felt like we have a lot of tournaments coming up," he said. "It’s time to focus on that."
The USGA uses the world ranking twice prior to the tournament, with one of the cutoff points after the PGA Championship. The top 60 qualify. Gooch, who was 40th at the end of 2022, slipped to 63rd this week and needed no worse than a 35th-place finish and likely a top 20 in order to move back into the top 60. (He is 26th in the SI World Golf Ranking, which includes LIV events.)
"Up to the wins (in Australia and Singapore), I’d been playing really well," Gooch said. "I just hadn’t gotten a lot out of it. Obviously I had a couple good wins. This was kind of the first week of the year where I just didn’t have the ball control. It’s not a good week to not know where the golf ball is going.
"I was just hitting it in the rough a lot and then I probably missed eight or 10 putts inside of 8 feet this week. That’s just golf sometimes."