Gooch says a McIlroy Masters win and career grand slam would need an asterisk
ory McIlroy of Northern Ireland plays a stroke from the No. 18 tee during practice round 2 at Augusta National Golf Club, Tuesday, April 4, 2023.
LIV Golf's Talor Gooch will likely be left waiting in vain for a Masters invitation after declaring that Rory McIlroy's name would need an asterisk beside it if he completes the career grand slam by donning the green jacket at Augusta National in April.
The reigning LIV Golf individual champion is disgusted he hasn't yet received an invitation to the season's opening major after winning three times last year and claiming the season-long points race against fields that included recent major winners Brooks Koepka, Cameron Smith, Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson.
"If Rory McIlroy goes and completes his Grand Slam without some of the best players in the world, there's just going to be an asterisk," the American told Australian Golf Digest.
"It's just the reality. I think everybody wins whenever the majors figure out a way to get the best players in the world there."
Lee Westwood and DeChambeau recently lashed out at the OWGR and Gooch, who has fallen to 449th in the world from a career-high 31st in June 2021, is the latest to take a potshot at a body governed by the four majors, the PGA European Tour Group, the PGA Tour and the International Federation of PGA Tours.
Augusta National is keen to have the best players in the world in the Masters in April, but it pointedly omitted Joaquin Niemann's recent LIV Golf performances and cited his Australian Open win and recent good play in other DP World Tour events as the reason why he has joined Dane Thorbjorn Olesen and Japan's Ryo Hisatsune in receiving a special invitation this year.
"It's not surprising," Gooch said. "I think the majors have kind of shown that they're not getting on board with LIV.
"Jaco went outside of LIV and played some great golf and they rewarded him for that.
"So, hopefully, the day will turn when the majors decide to start rewarding good play on LIV. Hopefully, that'll be sooner than later."
Westwood believes the OWGR is in trouble for its continued opposition to LIV Golf on technical grounds.
OWGR chairman Peter Dawson said last year that the OWGR would be able to work around some of the requirements, such as a 36-hole cut with an average field size of 75 players.
However, he said the voting committee "could not get past what amounts to a closed shop."
"LIV players are self-evidently good enough to be ranked," Dawson said. "They're just not playing in a format where they can be ranked equitably with the other 24 tours and thousands of players trying to compete on them."
While Masters champion Jon Rahm remains third in the world, PGA champion Koepka is 30th with 2022 Open champion Smith 45th, 2020 US Open champion DeChambeau 175th and 2020 Masters champion Johnson 247th after holding the world No 1 ranking as recently as June 2021.
Former world number one Westwood told the magazine: "I think the Official World Golf Ranking has got itself into a real hole. It's got itself to a point where it's obsolete, really, if I'm being completely honest.
"It's managed to be so stubborn that it no longer ranks all the best golfers in the world fairly. And it's gone so far that I don't see how it can come back from the hole that it's in because you can't backdate them."
Citing the lowly world rankings of DeChambeau and Johnson, Westwood added: "I don't know where the OWGR goes from there. It's not fit for purpose anymore.
"It's there to rank the best golfers in the world and it doesn't do that. And if you are a major championship and you're looking for the best fields, you now can't go off the OWGR to formulate your fields and use them for exemptions.
"You've got to find another way of doing it, otherwise you lose credibility as a major championship, don't you?"
Bizarrely, DeChambeau recently claimed that LIV Golf fulfils all the criteria required for inclusion in the world rankings, which is patently not the case.
"They said 'you need certain requirements', we have fulfilled all those requirements, despite what everybody thinks," he told LIV's Fairway To Heaven podcast.
“If you go look at their handbook, we have fulfilled every single criteria. It's been over two years now.
"What's going on guys? It's a bit frustrating, but nothing we can do at this moment.
“If we showcase ourselves in the major championships there's no way they can keep us out. We just got to play well in the majors and once we do, they have no choice."
LIV Golfers currently not in the Masters field include world number 96 Dean Burmester and 107th-ranked Oosthuizen, who both won back-to-back DP World titles late last year.
Burmester claimed the Joburg Open and the South African Open (the same week Niemann won the Australian Open) before Oosthuizen won the Alfred Dunhill Championship and the AfrAsia Mauritius Open
