"I just met with the leadership” – Talor Gooch reveals why he joined LIV Golf despite criticism from fans

Talor Gooch won the LIV Golf Individual Championship for 2023 at the Jeddah event in October.

The golfer’s season-long title fight earned him a substantial bonus of $18 million. With that, Gooch etched his name in the Saudi-backed series’ history books. Months after the achievement, the 32-year-old has revealed that he always wanted to make it big on the breakaway tour.

On the latest episode of the ‘Fairway to Heaven’ podcast, Gooch has said why he decided to make the initial leap to LIV despite the criticism. The former PGA Tour star said that he “just met with the leadership within LIV and saw the vision they had for the game of golf.” He added that the series officials wanted to make an impact in the sport by ‘growing LIV.’

Opening up on why he joined LIV Golf, Talor Gooch said:

"I just met with the leadership within LIV and I just saw the vision that they had for the game of golf, on an international level and on a global level and seeing where golf could go and the growth that it could potentially have but that was only possible with change.

"I'm not sitting here saying I made the leap because I wanted to change the global impact of golf but I saw on a global level like the lack of capturing opportunities to take golf to all corners of the world."

He added:

"And after meeting with the leaders of LIV, I'm like ‘these guys see what we could do with the game, these guys see where we could go with golf and these guys see the missed opportunity around the world also within the United States.’

"It's like if we get the right people in place to make the right decisions for the betterment of everybody, not just a handful, we could seriously grow this thing, we could seriously make an impact."

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Talor Gooch’s LIV Golf earnings explored

Talor Gooch became the 2023 LIV Golf Individual Champion at the Jeddah Invitational.

He dethroned Cameron Smith from season-long individual rankings to win the title. The golfer bagged a whopping $18 million bonus prize. It's pertinent to note that he played all 13 regular season events to accomplish the feat.

The LIV Golfer registered wins at Adelaide, Singapore and Andalucia events, bagging winner’s paychecks of $4 million each time.

According to reports, Gooch accumulated around $17,391,411 as on-course winnings from LIV Golf in 2023. Added to his $18 million bonus, the golfer earned close around $35,391,411 during the season.

For the unversed, Talor Gooch moved to LIV Golf in 2021. Before his defection, the golfer had earned $9,250,299 from 123 starts on the PGA Tour. He has now earned almost four times of that in LIV in just one season.