“FAAFO!” said a fed-up Phil Mickelson, in a now-deleted tweet, at the powers who controlled the LIV Golf Pros’s access to the majors. What does that mean? Well, it is basically an acronym for the phrase “F**k around and find out,” dished out while claiming how the major championships would not survive without the LIV golfers. Maybe it was effective, since now, just hours later, an announcement was made by the PGA Championship about none other than Talor Gooch.

A tweet was shared by NUCLR GOLF mentioning the same on their X handle (formerly Twitter). It divulges how Gooch has received an invite to play at the upcoming tournament at Valhalla Golf Course, all the while dubbing him as nothing short of a legend of the breakaway league: “World #644 and LIV Golf legend Talor Gooch says he’s received an invite to the PGA Championship. There will be NO asterisk for the years second major,” posted the tweet while alluding to the comment made by the 1-time PGA Tour champ over Rory McIlroy ahead of the Masters.

A member of Smash GC, the golfer, throughout his career as an athlete on the PIF-funded circuit, has a total of three victories, all of which came in 2023 at Adelaide, Singapore, and Andalucia. Gooch was crowned the season-ending Individual Champion for the same year when he finished first on the leaderboard with a total of 192 points and five top-10 finishes. For a professional who has not played in any OWGR-rated events this year, his invitation seems to have come just from his performance on the Saudi-backed league.

Coming back to Mickelson’s tweet, which he posted as a reply to a post from Flushing It, he said; “Maybe some LIV players won’t be missed. But what if NONE of the LIV players played? Would they be missed? What about next year when more great players join? Or the following year? At some point they will care and will have to answer to sponsors and television. FAAFO.” Notably, the television ratings for the 2024 Masters did take a 20% dip as opposed to last year, with less than 10 million viewers tuning in. It seems ‘Lefty’ was alluding to how a similar situation, if not a worse one, might occur if the defectors were kept away from majors.

Although the step taken by the PGA Championship is a big one, no doubt, it comes months after LIV Golf had abandoned its quest to gain recognition from the OWGR. The ranking body, whose role helps many golfers qualify for the four majors, had refused to give points to the league, citing concerns of format, and player retention, among other things. Regardless, the tournament has now decided to give a player who has not been awarded any points this year a chance, leading many in the community to express their dissatisfaction.

Netizens can’t seem to digest Talor Gooch’s invitation

When the 32-year-old was asked about attending his U.S. Open qualifiers, he just responded with a two-word reply: “I’m not!” Gooch did so since he was forced out of the 2023 edition of the major owing to a slight change in rules. This led him to express his disappointment with the majors, especially the U.S. Open. The fans couldn’t help but refer to the same while commenting under the recent post made by NUCLR GOLF as they responded with the likes of “He better show up — worst thing that could happen after all this talk would be a flop,” and “Anything less than a win for him, after all his whining, would be an epic failure on his part!”

Gooch has a total of five professional wins, three of which came on LIV Golf and the rest is divided evenly between the PGA Tour and Web.com Tour. He raked in the former at the 2021 RSM Classic with a score of 22-under 260, while the latter he did at the 2017 News Sentinel Open with figures of 18-under 266. Thus, dubbing him a legend on the course when the like of Brooks Koepka boast a total of 4 victories in the Saudi-backed league didn’t sit well with fans, who dished out their responses under the tweet; ““LIV golf legend”…..the guy with 1 win in 123 starts in the PGAT and missed 43 cuts. Now that is some funny”, “There’s no such thing as a “LIV Golf legend”, and “Yeah – he’s sooo good. I remember all his wins on the PGA tour (1) in 11 years.” But the one that stood out the most was when a follower typed in, “Ugh, who cares. He sucks.”

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It seems many PGA Tour loyalists do want Talor Gooch to end up missing the cut or not be able to back up his words. He sure has an uphill task remaining if the LIV Golf Pro is to prove everyone wrong!