PGA Tour winner Lucas Herbert says he’s over the constant discussions about LIV Golf and wants the topic to take a backseat, ahead of what promises to be a thrilling Australian summer of golf.
The Australian Open will be held next month for the first time since the 2019 edition preceded two cancelled Opens during the COVID-19 pandemic. A host of stars are coming Down Under to contest the men’s and women’s Australian Opens including Herbert, British Open champion Cameron Smith, major winner Adam Scott, Marc Leishman, Matt Jones, Hannah Green and Minjee Lee among others. The mens’ and women’s Opens will be played concurrently across Kingston Heath and Victoria golf clubs in Melbourne from December 1-4, a week after a bunch of big names also tee it up at the Australian PGA Championship at Royal Queensland.
The potential to go up against world No.3 Smith while vying for the Joe Kirkwood Cup (PGA) or the Stonehaven Cup (Open) is what Herbert is looking forward to about the Australian summer of golf after a long year playing around the world. He said winning twice on the European Tour and at the PGA Tour’s Bermuda Championship in 2021 had prepared him to match it with the talents of Smith, 2013 Masters champion Scott and Leishman at an Australian Open on the Melbourne Sandbelt.
“[Smith is] your player of the year from Australia, no doubt, and I know that he loves coming home and playing those events. So I think everyone else in the field would be looking at Cam as that’s the guy they have to beat,” Herbert, who recorded two top-15s at Majors this year, said from South Africa where he’s playing the DP World Tour’s Nedbank Challenge.
“But I also know that Leish, Scotty (Adam Scott) and myself are all sitting there knowing if we play well we can compete with Cam and definitely have a chance to beat him. I’ve had a season now pretty much playing against those boys week in week out, so I’m sort of used to that and they don’t have the same effect they might have on some of the other guys in the field who were getting up early on a Monday morning to watch them finish off PGA Tour events.
“I‘m not putting an event on my schedule just to turn off and have a laugh. If I’m putting an event on my schedule, I want to play well and I want to win it. I know Cam will be down there trying to win and he’s someone I’d love to go up against coming down the back nine on Sunday. If he gets going and plays really well, we’re probably going to struggle, but on our day we’re all capable of beating each other.”
This year, LIV Golf’s emergence has dominated media headlines given a bitter feud erupted between the established PGA and DP World tours. LIV Golf has Australian Greg Norman as its chief executive and is funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
LIV poached a host of top players across from the PGA Tour including Smith, Leishman, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and others. Smith was the biggest signing given he won three of his six total PGA Tour titles this year – including the Tournament of Champions, Players Championship and Open at St Andrews – before joining LIV in August.
But Herbert said reporters’ questions about LIV golf has become tiresome and players were wanting to put the topic behind them.
“I think everyone’s kind of over it and sick of talking about and sick of answering questions about [LIV],” Herbert said. “To be honest… for maybe the first month I think everyone was sort of trying to figure out what was going on and who‘s gonna go with who and what it’s gonna look like.
“I’d say that the two to three tours are gonna exist, and you’re not going to have any crossover. You’re not going to have players playing both tours. I think every player that went there knew what they were signing up for. They knew that the PGA Tour was going to ban them, but now I don’t necessarily agree with how they can complain that they can’t now play on the PGA Tour.
“I think tour players are now pretty much over [the topic of LIV]. All of us just want to turn up and play and there’s two pretty big lawsuits going on. We don’t really see a lot of the LIV guys anymore.
“But, you know, that’s their battle and I’m not really involved in it at all.”
