By Rahul Banerji
Form man Talor Gooch and the ever-consistent 4Aces will be among the favourites for LIV Golf League’s sixth 2023 event that tees off on Friday in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Gooch comes into his home event on a streak of successive wins at Adelaide and Singapore, and it has created just the sort of buzz in his home state the promoters would have dreamt of.
Leading the season’s individual rankings, Gooch is the first back-to-back winner in LIV Golf records and is almost guaranteed to have a solid following at the Cedar Ridge Country Club.
The par-70, 7,213-yard course at Broken Arrow will see a combined $25 million pot up for grabs — $20 million for the individual competition and $5 million for the team event. Of this, $4 million will go to the winner and $3 million to the top team.
Gooch, an Oklahoma State University star, leads an impressive Cowboys roster at Tulsa including the two men closest to him in the standings, Peter Peter Uihlein of the 4Aces and Chares Howell III of the Crushers.
Three others from OSU – Matthew Wolff of Smash GC, and Eugenio Chacarra and Abraham Ancer of the Fireballs, almost make LIV Golf Tulsa a home event for the Cowboys.
Fully an eighth of the 48-strong field that will tee off in Friday’s shotgun start are local boys in one form or another, a Tulsa resident was quoted as telling a regional newspaper.
Solid sales
Ticket sales too have climbed on the back of Gooch’s successive wins in the league with 10,000 visitors expected daily over the three days of action, tournament chairman Frank Billings said.
In the team standings, Dustin Johnson’s 4 Aces lead the way with Torque GC, Fireballs and the RangeGoats, who won their first title at Singapore following in that order.
Gooch incidentally shifted over to Bubba Watson’s RangeGoats at the start of the 2023 season after being part of the 4Aces setup in the inaugural year.
For his part, India star Anirban Lahiri is 16th in the individual standings.
The 35-year-old and Howell have been the backbone of the Bryson DeChambeau-led Crushers GC, who won the opening LIV Golf League event in Mayakoba, Mexico, in late February.
The Crushers are fifth in the team rankings and will be looking to make a move riding on Howell and Lahiri’s form. Between them, they have an individual win (Howell in Mexico) and a second-place finish (Lahiri in Australia).
At Adelaide, Lahiri almost overcame a 10-shot deficit on the final day against Gooch before the latter recovered his composure to close out a three-shot win.
The other twist in the tale is the year’s second major, the 105th PGA Championship at Rochester in New York, where 12 LIV Golf members including Lahiri and Gooch will line up on May 18 at Oak Hill.
They include former winners Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Cameron Smith, Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambea.
Given the way Mickelson and Koepka finished at the Masters in Augusta, there will be plenty of extra attention on the group and the odds-makers are reflecting that sentiment.
Meanwhile, watch this space for daily updates from Cedar Ridge.
Also read: Gooch makes it a double, his Goats top podium too at Singapore
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