Six golfers from the LIV Golf – seven including Joaquin Niemann at the beginning of March – received an invitation just before the official announcement on Tuesday, May 7th, for the field of the 106th PGA Championship in history.
Louis Oosthuizen, the 125th-ranked player in the world and also a member of the dissident Tour created in 2022, could have also benefited from it, but the South African, winner of The Open in 2010 at St Andrews, apparently declined the offer.
Liv Golf, news
Besides the hardly understandable presence of Talor Gooch – ranked 644th in the world as of May 5, 2024 – in the field of the 106th PGA Championship scheduled from May 16th to 19th in Louisville, Kentucky, at the Valhalla Golf Club, the absence of Louis Oosthuizen, ranked 125th in the world, raises questions.
Especially since another South African, Dean Burmester, much lower in the rankings (130th), is among the six LIV Golf members invited by the PGA of America for the second Major tournament of the season. But according to our colleague Doug Ferguson, this “omission” is the golfer’s doing, still a double winner on the DP World Tour at the beginning of December (Alfred Dunhill Championship and AfrAsia Bank Mauritius Open).
It seems that Louis Oosthuizen, with $40 million in career earnings and two-time runner-up in the PGA Championship in 2017 and 2021, had other more important things to do… A member of LIV Golf since June 2022 and captain of the Stinger GC, Oosthuizen, now 41 years old, also recently hinted that his “priorities” were elsewhere, notably in managing the family farm in Mossel Bay, South Africa.
And if his “withdrawal,” relatively speaking, can allow one of his compatriots, moreover, a colleague on the LIV Golf, to participate in a Major tournament, the explanation is even more plausible. Louis Oosthuizen (born October 19, 1982, in Mossel Bay, Western Cape) is a South African golfer who has achieved seven victories on the European Tour, finishing third in the 2012 season, sixth in 2015, and tenth in 2010.
In major tournaments, Oosthuizen won The Open Championship in 2010 and finished second in the Masters Tournament in Augusta in 2012, The Open Championship in 2015, and the US Open in 2015. Additionally, he triumphed in the Open de Andalucía in 2010, the Africa Open in 2011 and 2012, the Malaysian Open in 2010, and the Volvo Golf Champions in 2013 and 2014. Furthermore, Oosthuizen competed in the Presidents Cup in 2013 and 2015 as part of the International Team.
