Australian golf star Smith makes PGA Tour decision
Steve Larkin |
Cameron Smith has flatly rejected an offer to rejoin the US PGA Tour, saying he wasn’t tempted to leave the breakaway LIV Golf circuit.
Smith and fellow recent major winners on the LIV Tour, Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau, had been given a one-time offer to follow Brooks Koepka and return to the PGA Tour.
Australian star Smith said he was “sad” at Koepka’s departure, but wasn’t tempted by the PGA offer.
“No,” Smith told reporters on Wednesday.
“I have made my bed and I’m going to sleep in it.
“I feel like I’m in a really good place in my career and my life, family life, and I don’t need to change it.”
Rahm and DeChambeau also turned down the offer
Smith was an inaugural LIV Golf signing in 2022, accepting a deal reportedly worth about $150 million, and captains the all-Australian Ripper GC on the LIV Tour.
“I’m going to stay, mate,” said Smith, the 2022 British Open champion.
“I have made a decision to come here (to LIV) and I’m standing by it.”
The big three were given an offer to return to the PGA Tour, with a February 2 deadline to decide.
It followed US star and five-time major winner Koepka’s decision to depart LIV and return to the PGA Tour.
“Is it a shame to have him go? Absolutely,” Smith said of Koepka.
“He’s a star of the game.
“On one side, I’m sad to see him go; he’s a good friend and it’s not good.
“On the other side, I’m really looking forward to what we’re doing out here (at LIV).”
Koepka accepted stringent restrictions on his financial benefits and will make a charitable donation of $7.45 million to return to the PGA under what the US-based tour dubbed the ‘Returning Member Program”.
The offer to return was made to Smith, Koepka, Rahm (2023 Masters winner) and DeChambeau (2024 US Open champion) because it applied to players who have won any of the four majors or the Players Championship between 2022 and 2025.
Six-time major winner Phil Mickelson, an outspoken critic of the PGA Tour, was pointedly excluded by the criteria by just one year – his last major win came at the 2021 US PGA Championship.
The LIV Golf season starts in Saudi Arabia on February 4, with the circuit moving to four-day tournaments after staging three-day events in past years.
Smith said he would soon announce Ripper GC’s latest signing, with Gold Coast-born 23-year-old Elvis Smylie in the frame to join the Australian team.
Smylie is set to join Smith, Marc Leishman and Lucas Herbert, after compatriot and inaugural Ripper member Matt Jones lost his LIV credential and failed to regain it via qualifying events last week.
AAP
