RYDER CUP HOPEFUL GOOCH READY TO MAKE MAJOR STATEMENT

When Talor Gooch struck his first tee shot at LIV Golf’s inaugural event 13 months ago in London, he was ranked 35th in the world. He also was hovering near the top 15 in the U.S. Ryder Cup standings.

Including that first LIV start, Gooch has played 23 worldwide stroke-play tournaments, 16 of those in regular-season LIV Golf events. He’s won three times, finished top 10 in five other starts (including a solo fourth at the 2022 BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth), and top 20 an additional six times. He currently leads the season-long points race in LIV Golf’s Individual Champion standings.

All three of his wins have come outside the U.S. – in Australia, Singapore and Spain in his last six starts in the LIV Golf League. In his 19 international rounds this season on all tours, he’s a cumulative 67 under, including back-to-back rounds of 10-under 62 in Adelaide, the lowest rounds relative to par in LIV Golf’s young history.

Given that this year’s Ryder Cup will be played outside Rome at Marco Simone Golf and Country Club, his global performance is difficult to ignore. “For whatever reason,” he said, “these international tournaments I've played well.”

Yet because LIV Golf events are not awarded Official World Golf Ranking points, he lacks the opportunity to earn Ryder Cup points beyond the seven non-LIV starts he’s made in the last 13 months. Thus, his Ryder Cup ranking has dropped from 12th in mid-May 2022 to 86th this week.

That’s despite winning those three events against fields that have included 13 major champions. His last win – at Real Club Valderrama, which in 1997 hosted the first Ryder Cup played outside the United Kingdom or the U.S. – came against a field that included two reigning major champions in Open champ Cameron Smith and PGA champ Brooks Koepka. His previous win in Singapore came in a playoff against Sergio Garcia, the biggest points producer in Ryder Cup history.

With the victories piling up, Gooch has been asked repeatedly in recent weeks to provide his thoughts on a potential spot on the U.S. Ryder Cup team.

On the eve of his victory in Andalucía, he revealed his reaction after hearing the news of the framework agreement that was announced on June 6. He said he was in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, at the time, and received 137 text messages.

“My immediate thought was, I wonder what this means for Ryder Cup?” Gooch said. “If apples were to apples, the guy leading the FedExCup and the guy leading the LIV standings, it's like – I think my play has shown that it's at least worth a discussion.

“At the end of the day, the better I play, the more that is just going to be a discussion hopefully. I've got to go win, and I've got to go prove that I'm worthy of having a discussion about.”

He did win the next day. Paired with Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau in the final round, Gooch posted the best score of the three, a 4-under 67, and rolled in the winning birdie putt on the final hole to claim the title by one stroke over DeChambeau.

Afterward, Gooch was again asked about the Ryder Cup.

“Hey, at the end of the day, the professional golf world has been in a crazy place over the last 365 days,” he replied. “I've always dreamed of being on a Ryder Cup. Before making the decision to come to LIV, Max Homa was one of my good buddies on PGA Tour, and we talked about – my wife and I did our honeymoon in Italy, and we did Rome, and he and his wife couldn't do their honeymoon in Italy, so we had always had the talk the last couple years of, well, we're just going to have to go team up there and go do it.

“Obviously it's out of my hands. It's out of my control. But the one thing I can control is playing good golf. I'll continue to do that to the best of my abilities, and hopefully things work out.”

Gooch said he hasn’t spoken to U.S. Ryder Cup Captain Zach Johnson, nor has Johnson attended a LIV Golf event to scout potential players in person for the six captain’s picks that he’ll make near the end of August. But Johnson will finally get a chance to see Gooch in person next week at The Open Championship at Royal Liverpool, as the Oklahoma native is one of 16 LIV golfers in the field.

It will be Gooch’s last start to earn real Ryder Cup points – and it will be his last opportunity to make a statement that can’t be dismissed.

While he feels like that statement has already been made with his LIV success this season ­­– success that was foreshadowed by his competitive play last year – he realizes the current landscape of professional golf may not favor an endorsement from hard-lined followers or traditional golf entities.

After his final-round 3-under 68 on Sunday at LIV Golf London that moved him into a tie for 21st, Gooch discussed the need to make one more statement.

“We all know how hard it is to win in professional golf,” he said. “I know it’s comparing apples to oranges but who’s won 3 times on the PGA Tour? This is only our ninth event this year. I’ve won three of nine. Beaten a bunch of major champions, a bunch of great players. I think that’s a statement.

“But I understand that everyone thinks you’ve got to go do it in the majors, so we’ve got to go have a good week. If I go play well there, I think that would make a statement.”

Even if Gooch wins his first career major next week, it won’t move him high enough in the rankings to earn one of the six automatic spots. Take Koepka’s rise in the rankings the last few months as a comparison.

In April, Koepka entered the season’s first major, the Masters, ranked 97th in Ryder Cup points. He tied for second that week (with Phil Mickelson) and jumped to 16th.

By the start of the PGA Championship the next month, Koepka had dropped to 22nd. But at the end of that week, after his victory at Oak Hill, Koepka moved to second in the standings by earning 6,300 Ryder Cup points.

He dropped one spot after the U.S. Open when he tied for 17th and remains in third place going into the Open Championship. He’s expected to stay in the top six by the end of the qualification period in August. If Gooch wins the Open and gets a similar number of points, he could move inside the top 12, depending on how others fare.

After seeing what Gooch has accomplished this season, Koepka is on board with having his LIV Golf rival as a potential teammate in Rome.

“Maybe a spot on the Ryder Cup?” Koepka said after Gooch’s Andalucía victory. “He's playing that good.”

Gooch’s RangeGoats GC Captain Bubba Watson – who has played in four Ryder Cups and was a vice-captain in 2016 – also endorses his teammate.

Speaking prior to last week’s London event, Watson said Gooch and the PGA Tour’s Rickie Fowler are both worthy of picks. Fowler, who’s recent win in Detroit ended a four-year drought, is 12th in the standings.

“I would have to say those two have been the impressive ones the last few weeks, just their high finishes and how they've been playing pretty much all year,” Watson said. “… If Rickie is not already in in points, he's definitely getting a pick, and Talor should definitely get a pick. He's playing that well, and he plays really good outside the U.S.”

That’s the good news for Gooch. His track record lately certainly is impressive on international soil. He couldn’t ask for better form going into the Open. But he’ll need to produce his best career result in a major to give Johnson and his advisers something to chew on.

In his 10 career major starts, Gooch’s best result is a tie for 14th at last year’s Masters. This season, he tied for 34th at Augusta National and missed the cut at the PGA. He did not qualify for the U.S. Open after the wording on a previous exemption was adjusted earlier this year.

Gooch doesn’t think his prior major results should detract from what he’s achieved this season as his game has reached a new level.

“It’s debatable because there’s a lot of guys that have made Ryder Cups, been in Ryder Cups that haven’t done well in majors,” he said. “I understand that’s what the world is trying to make it out to be. It just doesn’t correlate with what has gone on historically.”

Johnson should know. When he qualified for his first Ryder Cup in 2006 – he was ninth in points, with the top 10 guaranteed spots back then – he had made 11 major starts at that point, with seven missed cuts and no top 10s. He was 30 years old at that point with one Tour win to date.

Gooch, of course, hopes to make it a moot point by winning at Hoylake. In his two previous Open starts, he finished T33 in 2021 and T34 last year. He said that of all the majors, the Open is the one he looks forward to the most. Considering the momentum he’ll be riding, it could be a special week.

And hey, he already has experience drinking out of the Claret Jug, having done so when reigning champ Cameron Smith brought it to the Andalucía event. He now needs to be the one filling it up.

“The Open is my favorite tournament of the year,” said Gooch, who spent a few days in Paris this week before heading back to England. “I’m beyond excited about it.”

He’s also excited about his future. Gooch has turned a corner in his professional career this season. He unlocked the key to winning on a consistent basis, against many of the game’s biggest stars and major winners. At age 31, he’s reaching his prime.

Whether that translates into a spot in this year’s Ryder Cup is an immediate question. Long-term, though, he’s never felt more confident. More self-assured. He walks between shots with a swagger. Potential Star has been replaced by Proven Winner.

“Five years ago, my game wasn't what it is now,” he said after his Andalucía win. “I always had the belief that down the road if I – week in and week out, month in and month out ­– put the work in, I knew good things were going to happen.

“We just kept building stones on this house and building belief in this journey and knowing that those are the things that are going to eventually get you to these positions to do what we did today.

“It's been a journey. It's been years and years of hard work and sacrifice by both myself and my family and my wife and my coach and my trainer and everyone involved. It's not by chance that this is happening, but I'm forever grateful that it is happening.”