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LOS ANGELES – Every major tournament has a pre-tournament theme. Favorite. the chapter. Maybe raw. Sometimes it’s a bigger story that grabs the headlines. Eighteen Months Ago: Will LIV Golf Happen? Twelve Months Ago: Will LIV Golf Last? A month ago: Should LIV Golfers be in the Ryder Cup?
And this week’s topic? that’s easy. Nobody knows anything. seriously. Just ask them.
“I’ll be completely honest, I know just as much as you do,” said Matt Fitzpatrick.
“I know as much, if not less, than you,” said Max Homma. “Maybe I am not able to give a true opinion.”
Cameron Smith added, “There’s definitely a lot of curious players, I think, on both sides of what the future is going to look like.”
What they’re talking about, of course, is last week’s news of the merger of the PGA Tour, DP World and PIF, which funds LIV Golf. This story broke exactly seven days ago, and there are still more questions than answers. Is LIV Golf in the future? How easy or difficult will it be for LIV players to return to the PGA Tour? What does the 2024 schedule look like? What about the Ryder Cup?
“I thought my phone was going to catch fire at some point,” said John Rahm, who was home with his children when the news broke. “There were so many questions that I couldn’t answer. It’s basically what it was. I think it was that day at some point I told him [my wife] Kelly, I’m just going to throw my phone in the drawer and not look at it for the next four hours because I can’t handle this anymore.”
It’s easy to understand the players’ frustration, lack of communication, uncertainty and questions about it. Yes, they don’t know what’s going on, but the media – I’m biased here – still has to ask questions. (This is our business!)
That brings us to Colin Morikawa, 26, two-time main winner. He was ready for the question that came at the end of his press conference Tuesday at the Los Angeles Country Club. He probably wasn’t shocked to get it either, since he was one of the high-profile pros who tweeted a moment after the news broke last week.
Here was the reporter’s question: After your tweet the morning of the merger, you had a few days to process it and talk to people. Can you share your thoughts at this point?
“Yes. I don’t know anything,” he said. “So I’ll talk about the FORE Youth project we’re doing. It’s this Maggie Hathaway project. something amazing. It is a community dedicated to underprivileged children, children who do not have the opportunity to play. There are so many great organizations getting on board with this, and it’s something that means a lot to me.”
Great answer, isn’t it? Here is the rest.
“I think Los Angeles has a huge gap. We play Riviera every year, we play the LACC this year. There is a huge gap between private golf and public golf here in Los Angeles.” “It’s not the case for everyone, but there really are, and most people play public municipal golf courses, and changing that golf course would be great. It would provide opportunities that I think I’ve learned from golf can only teach kids the real world. School teaches a lot of things, But the real world is that you can learn a lot from golf. That’s my answer.”
Speaking of Maggie Hathaway, we wrote about her in the latest issue of GOLF Magazine, which you can check out here.
Morikawa, who won the press conference battle Tuesday, began his search for Major No. 3 at 11:13 a.m. ET Thursday. He plays alongside Max Homma and Scottie Scheffler in the first two rounds.