LIV Golf's Bubba Watson Explains Trading Talor Gooch and Landing Matthew Wolff
RangeGoats GC captain Bubba Watson made a significant move Wednesday, trading Goats Talor Gooch and Harold Varner III for Matthew Wolff and Peter Uihlein.
It’s a move that doesn’t eclipse the significance of Juan Soto to the Yankees, a team Watson has followed since he was a youngster in the Florida panhandle, but it is a move Watson has wanted to make since he joined LIV in 2022.
The lefthander always wanted to sign Wolff, 24, believing his youth and his game would be a huge benefit to his team.
So, after the last LIV event of 2022, Watson made a full court press to sign Wolff, but lost out to Brooks Koepka and Smash GC.
Bubba Watson's RangeGoats GC will have two new players next year in Matthew Wolff and Peter Uihlein.
Michele Eve Sandberg/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
It was a move that both Koepka and Wolff grew to regret. The Oklahoma State product started hot with three top 12s including a fifth in Orlando, but the rest of the 2023 season with the exception of a fifth at the Greenbrier was not only unforgettable but caused an irreparable rift between captain and player. That rift overflowed when Koepka was candid in his comments about Wolff and his attitude in July at the LIV event in London.
“I mean, when you quit on your round, you give up and stuff like that, that's not competing,” Koepka said then. “I'm not a big fan of that. You don't work hard. It's very tough. It's very tough to have even like a team dynamic when you've got one guy that won't work, one guy is not going to give any effort, he’s going to quit on the course, break clubs, gets down, bad body language, it's very tough. I've basically given up on him—a lot of talent, but I mean the talent's wasted.”
Now Watson finally has Wolff and Gooch, who finished atop LIV Golf's individual standings in 2023 with three wins and a total of $36 million, replaces Wolff at Smash GC.
“From a golf standpoint, I'm rolling the dice thinking that this is the right pieces together,” Watson says. “But now from a personal standpoint, I'm putting him on my team because I get to influence him.”
Watson is unwilling to call Wolff a reclamation project, but he understands that one of the youngest players on LIV has struggled with mental health issues that came to the forefront after a DQ at the 2021 Masters when the then-22-year-old stepped away from the Tour.
“I think the biggest thing right now that I'm trying to do is enjoy myself again and just take care of myself really,” Wolff said when he returned at the 2021 U.S. Open. “I mean, I love these fans and I want to play well for them, but right now I'm just really trying to be happy and I, like I said, I live a great life and I want to enjoy it.”
Watson, who readily admits he suffers from his own mental health issues, believes that he can help Wolff be the player he has seen be successful. If he's right, it will benefit the RangeGoats.
“Not saying I'm a perfect influence, but at least I can show him my paths that I went down,” Watson says. “And hopefully he doesn't take those paths or those mental struggles even deeper, like I did. So that's not to say there's multiple layers to this. It's not just giving up one for the other, right? There's actually a real business reason behind it. And there's actually a real golf reason behind it.”
Watson was unwilling to explain the business aspects specifically, but offered the fact that each contract is different in LIV. Reading between the lines, the cost of Gooch may be much more than the cost of Wolff, and if Watson can get Wolff’s game turned around it will be a financial benefit to the team.
Watson’s original plans after the LIV finale in Florida were to run it back, meaning to see the RangeGoats stay pat in 2024.
The team had shown progress and harmony, finishing fourth in the yearly standings and second in the team finale in Florida, with the team pocketing $8 million.
Gooch, Varner and the fourth RangeGoat, Thomas Pieters, were competing in the Hong Kong Open in mid-November when an e-mail came from the Smash GC camp inquiring about Watson’s interest in Wolff.
The two-time Masters champ went immediately to Gooch to determine his interest and a week later Gooch, after returning from Hong Kong, told Watson that if he was going to play for any other team it would be for Smash and Koepka.
“I said 'man 100 percent I agree with you, 10 years from now, Bubba Watson's gonna be 55 years old and probably not gonna be playing golf, right? And if you want to run it with a good player, why would you not want to run it with Brooks?'" Watson said. "I get that from a business standpoint, I get that from player standpoint, I get it from all angles.”
At the same time Watson knew he couldn’t do a one-for-one deal, Gooch for Wolff. He also knew that Wolff needed a friend, which took his thoughts first to Andy Ogletree but eventually to Peter Uihlein.
Add in the fact that Uihlein led the LIV tour in driving distance in 2023, a stat that Watson believes is important in LIV team success, and the die was cast if he could move Varner to the 4 Aces for Uihlein.
“You know how difficult it is calling a guy that's a buddy of yours?” Watson said about calling Varner.
But Varner was more than willing to make the jump to the Dustin Johnson-captained 4 Aces and once Varner said yes, Watson went to Johnson to pitch the deal.
“We knew we could trade No. 1 (Gooch) for Wolff. Right? That's an easy trade,” Watson said. “But we got to make this piece first (Varner for Uihlein). So, it wasn't a three-team trade. It was just two teams. But I had to make this piece work first before I could go over here to this piece. And so that worked out, DJ agreed to it.“
But like with any deal, it's about the details.
“I went over to Smash and talk to them about Wolff,” Watson said “There's some things behind the scenes that we had to work out. You know, legal terms, contract stuff and all these things and it worked in our favor.”
The trade puts two friends together and gives Wolff one more chance to prove he was the player that both Koepka last year and Watson this year believes he can be.
At the same time, the RangeGoats must make up for the loss of two top-10 players, with Gooch finishing at the top of the standings and Varner 7th.
“I truly believe this is a guy that you can build team around,“ Watson says of Wolff. “Everybody thrives differently. I don't thrive on negativity, right? Not everybody likes negativity, some people thrive off that. And so I believe you have the right atmosphere around this kid, you can build off that.
"He's 24 years old … let's look at it long-term-goals wise and he could be a face of the RangeGoats for many years to come.”