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Jack Nicklaus on LIV players: 'I don’t even consider those guys part of the game anymore'

For Jack Nicklaus, what's done is done, and the PGA Tour is done with LIV Golf players.

The Memorial at Jack Nicklaus' Muirfield Village Golf Club is underway, and that means Nicklaus, golf's reigning sage, is holding court on all matters pertaining to the game. These days, that includes LIV Golf, and more specifically, its highly successful members.

LIV Golf players currently hold half of the majors — Brooks Koepka's PGA Championship and Cam Smith's Open Championship — and claim a significant percentage of all off-course commentary. Still, no LIV players are in the field at The Memorial, for obvious reasons: It's a PGA Tour event, and LIV players have been suspended from the tour. For Nicklaus, the LIV split a done deal.

Jack Nicklaus at The Memorial in 2022. (Ben Jared/PGA TOUR via Getty Images)
Jack Nicklaus at The Memorial in 2022. (Ben Jared/PGA TOUR via Getty Images)

"I don’t even consider those guys part of the game anymore," Nicklaus said. "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."

Also absent from The Memorial field because of LIV associations: longtime tour mainstays like Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia and Bryson DeChambeau, who won the event in 2018. "It’s just where they chose to play golf," Nicklaus said. "I wish them all well."

Where other critics of players who jumped to LIV have used apocalyptic language and brinksmanship, Nicklaus has been more diplomatic and live-and-let-live. "There were certain players that it was probably the right thing for," he said. "It probably spurred the PGA Tour, I don’t think there’s any question about that, either, to move it to greater heights. But it wasn’t for me, it wasn’t for what my legacy was. Obviously, I pretty much started what the tour is out here."

His history with the tour is what prompted Nicklaus to turn down — two times, according to him — a reported $100 million offer to serve as CEO of LIV. But he remains cordial with many of the LIV principals, having done course design business with some of them, and noted that he sent Koepka a congratulatory note after Koepka captured the PGA Championship at Oak Hill last month. Nicklaus won the same event at the same course in 1980.

The ties between Nicklaus and LIV are numerous and tangled. LIV CEO Greg Norman was recently subpoenaed to turn over an email that Nicklaus reportedly sent congratulating Norman on the start of the tour. The Nicklaus Companies, the company that bears Nicklaus' name, is involved in a lawsuit against Nicklaus himself, and is seeking any documentation relating to Nicklaus' connection to Norman and LIV.

Brooks Koepka and Jack Nicklaus in happier days, back in 2018. (Ben Jared/PGA TOUR)
Brooks Koepka and Jack Nicklaus in happier days, back in 2018. (Ben Jared/PGA TOUR)

If there's a non-major tournament that won't miss the LIV players, The Memorial is it. One of the tour's new "designated" events, with a boosted $20 million purse, the field features seven of the top 10 in the Official World Golf Rankings, 25 of the top 30 in the FedEx Cup standings, and 22 of the 27 winners on tour this year.

"I think it's probably as good a field as we've ever had," Nicklaus said. "We've got a great field."

The Memorial runs through Sunday. The U.S. Open tees off later this month in Los Angeles.