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Jack Nicklaus sounds off on LIV Golf players again ahead of the Memorial

By Cody Williams

AUGUSTA, GEORGIA - APRIL 06: Jack Nicklaus of the United States prepares to play his shot during the first tee ceremony prior to the first round of the 2023 Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club on April 06, 2023 in Augusta, Georgia. (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
AUGUSTA, GEORGIA - APRIL 06: Jack Nicklaus of the United States prepares to play his shot during the first tee ceremony prior to the first round of the 2023 Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club on April 06, 2023 in Augusta, Georgia. (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images) /
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Jack Nicklaus doesn’t have two of the reigning major winners at the Memorial Tournament this week, but one of the greats isn’t mincing words about LIV Golf.

The PGA Tour is heading to Muirfield Village Golf Club this week for the Memorial Tournament, hosted by the course’s designer and one of golf’s all-time greats, Jack Nicklaus. As a designated event, the field is absolutely loaded in Dublin, OH — but two of the four most recent major championship winners won’t be playing.

That, of course, is because 2022 Open Champion Cameron Smith and Brooks Koepka, who won the PGA Championship just a couple of weeks ago, left the PGA Tour to join LIV Golf. The penalty of that decision, of course, is that LIV Golf members are no longer allowed to play PGA Tour events.

Ahead of his tournament, though, Nicklaus was talking to reporters and was asked if he felt like the event was missing Koepka and Smith. His response was a complete blast of LIV Golf and its players, per SI’s Bob Harig:

"“I don’t really consider those guys part of the game anymore; and I don’t mean that in a nasty way … or really mean it that way,” Nicklaus said. “To me, this is a PGA Tour event and we’ve got the best field we can possibly have on the PGA Tour. Those who are eligible to be here. The other guys made a choice to go where they went. We don’t really talk about it.”"

Jack Nicklaus on LIV Golf: ‘I don’t really consider those guys part of the game anymore’

Nicklaus might not “mean that in a nasty way”, but I’m not sure how else you’d take that. He also later added that he doesn’t believe that anyone who joined LIV Golf should be allowed to play in PGA Tour events or allowed to come back, saying that they “made their choice”.

On top of that, Nicklaus also surmised that players who joined LIV Golf did so because golf was a means to an end, unlike what he said it was for him, which was trying to be the best in competition and letting the money come with that. He also asserted that most of the players still on the PGA Tour approached the game the way he did.

Since the start of LIV Golf, Nicklaus has been critical, even though he has admitted he was approached and met with the Saudi-backed league — so much so that LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman called the Golden Bear a “hypocrite” for what he asserted was reversing his stance on the startup.

It’s also worth noting that Nicklaus himself, along with Arnold Palmer, Gardner Dickinson and Bob Goalby, led players to break away from the PGA of America, which still runs the PGA Championship and Ryder Cup for the Americans, in 1968 to form what we now know today as the PGA Tour.

Regardless of where Nicklaus’ truth in his heart of hearts is in all of this, though, he’s certainly not holding back in criticizing LIV Golf at this current juncture.

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