Cameron Smith has flatly rejected an offer to rejoin the US PGA Tour, saying he wasn\u2019t tempted to leave the breakaway LIV Golf circuit.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Australian star Smith said he was \u201csad\u201d at Koepka\u2019s departure, but wasn\u2019t tempted by the PGA offer.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d Smith told reporters on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have made my bed and I\u2019m going to sleep in it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I\u2019m in a really good place in my career and my life, family life, and I don\u2019t need to change it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rahm and DeChambeau also turned down the offer<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to stay, mate,\u201d said Smith, the 2022 British Open champion.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have made a decision to come here (to LIV) and I\u2019m standing by it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The big three were given an offer to return to the PGA Tour, with a February 2 deadline to decide.<\/p>\n
It followed US star and five-time major winner Koepka\u2019s decision to depart LIV and return to the PGA Tour.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs it a shame to have him go? Absolutely,\u201d Smith said of Koepka.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a star of the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn one side, I\u2019m sad to see him go; he\u2019s a good friend and it\u2019s not good.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the other side, I\u2019m really looking forward to what we\u2019re doing out here (at LIV).\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u201cReturning Member Program\u201d.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Six-time major winner Phil Mickelson, an outspoken critic of the PGA Tour, was pointedly excluded by the criteria by just one year \u2013 his last major win came at the 2021 US PGA Championship.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Smith said he would soon announce Ripper GC\u2019s latest signing, with Gold Coast-born 23-year-old Elvis Smylie in the frame to join the Australian team.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
-with AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cameron Smith has flatly rejected an offer to rejoin the US PGA Tour, saying he wasn\u2019t tempted to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-411375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}