Talor Gooch might be frustrated he’s not currently in this year’s US Open field, but the LIV player apparently received some good news Thursday evening.
According to Gooch, he has been invited to compete in next month’s PGA Championship at Oak Hill.
“Just got my invite to the PGA Champ,” Gooch tweeted. “Now just in a position where I can play well and get in that top 60. Wish this wasn’t the case, but not an unfamiliar place.”
Gooch’s invite is important for a couple of reasons. For one, he is currently ranked No. 59 in the Official World Golf Ranking, so getting a major start – and a chance to earn crucial world-ranking points – before the top-60 cutoff on May 23 is huge if he wants to qualify for the US Open at Los Angeles Country Club. Also, per Sports Illustrated, Gooch did not file a US Open entry by the April 13 deadline, so he is unable to go through final qualifying, leaving his only path to the US Open through the world ranking.
In past years, Gooch would have earned his US Open spot by qualifying for the Tour Championship at East Lake, which he did last year. However, Gooch’s defection to LIV last summer left him ineligible to play the PGA Tour’s FedExCup Playoffs, and new verbiage in the US Open’s exemption criteria stated that exemptions would go to, among other categories, “Those players who qualified and were eligible for the season -end of the 2022 Tour Championship.” With the words “and were eligible” being the distinguisher.
“That was obviously disappointing because that changed rule only affected one person, which was me,” Gooch said recently on the 73rd Hole Podcast. “So, that was frustrating and tough because with LIV still not being rewarded with world-ranking points, I have only two options to qualify for the US Open: via my world ranking, which is going to be very challenging, or trying to obviously go through the qualifying route of sectional qualifying.”
Gooch, who on Sunday won the LIV Adelaide event, is already qualified for The Open at Royal Liverpool in July via the Tour Championship exemption. The R&A did not adjust the language of that exemption. Neither did the Masters this year, although Augusta National did announce earlier this month that it was adding the eligibility requirement to its Tour Championship invitation criteria. (Gooch earned his most recent Masters invite via being top 50 in the OWGR at the end of 2022.)
It is unclear, however, exactly how Gooch is already in this year’s PGA Championship field, considering it doesn’t finalize its invites for the top 70 in PGA points until May 8, and Gooch is No. 190 in PGA points entering this week. The PGA also traditionally – although not required to – used the OWGR to fill out its fields.
The PGA has yet to respond to a GolfChannel.com inquiry about if and how Gooch received his invite.
Three other players, including one LIV member, received official PGA invites this week. LIV’s Sihwan Kim, as well as Kazuki Higa and Ockie Strydom, were awarded invites based on the April 24 cutoff for the PGA’s new International Federation Ranking exemption, which goes to the top three players in that standing.
Also already qualified for this year’s PGA are the following LIV players: Abraham Ancer, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Martin Kaymer, Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson, Mito Pereira, Cam Smith and Brendan Steele. Paul Casey, Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood and Bernd Wiesberger would also qualify based on playing the 2021 Ryder Cup, but they’d need to be inside the OWGR’s top 100 on May 8 to satisfy the second part of that criteria, and none of them are at the moment. (Paul Casey, at No. 120, is the closest of the group.)
Johnson, Kaymer, Koepka, Mickelson, Smith and Joaquin Niemann are already in the US Open.