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LIV Golf had to know it was going to make more than a few enemies when it set out to take on the PGA Tour, although it’s hard to imagine all of the people involved anticipated the sheer amount of backlash the upstart league would be subjected to.
By now, you’re probably very familiar with the various feuds at the center of the nearly unprecedented amount of drama generated by the friction between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour, as players on both sides haven’t exactly been shy about sharing their thoughts on the rift.
That includes a number of fairly legendary figures who’ve taken aim at LIV since its inception; Nick Faldo dubbed the organization “meaningless” while highlighting its struggles to lure in viewers, and Fred Couples described Phil Mickelson as a “nutbag” while tearing into the league earlier this year.
Jack Nicklaus has been a bit less vocal, but the man who repeatedly rejected a $100 million offer to serve as LIV’s primary ambassador has also made it very clear his allegiances lie with the PGA Tour.
On Tuesday, he reaffirmed that position while speaking with reporters who gathered at Muirfield Village Golf Club ahead of this week’s Memorial Tournament during a press conference where he asserted the tournament boasted “probably as good a field as we’ve ever had” despite the absence of recent major winners like Brooks Koepka and Cameron Smith.
According to Golf Week, he declined to mince words while addressing how he feels about them and other defectors, saying:
“I don’t even consider those guys part of the game anymore. I don’t mean that in a nasty way.
This is a PGA Tour event and we have the best field we can possibly have for a PGA Tour event for those who are eligible to be here. The other guys made a choice of what they did and where they’ve gone and we don’t even talk about it.”
He did go out of his way to clarify he doesn’t hold any major grudges against the golfers who’ve taken their talents to LIV (saying “I wish them all well”), but based on his comments, he doesn’t seem to think they’ve created a major void that needs to be filled.