The 2024 PGA Championship at Valhalla, the second men’s major of the year, is just days away. While most pros have spent weeks, if not months, trying to earn a spot in the field, one former major winner and current LIV pro received an invite but decided not to play, according to a new report.
On Tuesday, the PGA officials announced the preliminary field for next week’s major, featuring 154 players in what will be a 156-player field. Included on that list were six pros who now ply their trades with LIV Golf and who weren’t otherwise qualified.
Three of them — Adrian Meronk, Patrick Reed and Lucas Herbert — are ranked in the Top 100 in the Official World Golf Ranking. Three others — David Puig, Dean Burmester and Talor Gooch — proved their value with their play on the Asian Tour, DP World Tour and on LIV.
But there was one glaring absence from the LIV invitees list: Louis Oosthuizen.
Not only is Oosthuizen a major champion, thanks to his blowout victory at the 2010 Open at St. Andrews, he’s also had numerous near-misses on golf’s biggest stages. Oosthuizen lost the 2012 Masters to Bubba Watson in a playoff. He finished runner-up at the 2015 U.S. Open and T2 at the 2021 U.S. Open. As for the PGA, he also has two runner-up finishes there, earning T2s in 2017 and 2021.
The fact that his name was missing from the field was even stranger given the fact that he won two DP World Tour events in December.
But now, thanks to the AP’s Doug Ferguson, we may have some insight into why Oosthuizen won’t be at Valhalla along with his fellow LIV compatriots.
Tuesday afternoon, Ferguson tweeted, “Turns out PGA offered Oosthuizen an invitation. He turned it down because of personal commitments. Not sure what those were.”
If that report is true, it means PGA Championship officials did deem Oosthuizen worth of participating in their event, and they did want him in the field. Oosthuizen, however, declined the invite for personal reasons.
Thanks to his DP World Tour wins, Oosthuizen in now ranked No. 125 in the Official World Golf Ranking. He had moved all the way up to No. 107 after a runner-up at the International Series Oman event in February, but that wasn’t enough to make the Masters field last month, for which he did not receive an invite, or for an automatic invite into the PGA.
