“I could never get comfortable with giving up on childhood dreams of the majors”

Justin Rose revealed earlier this week that he rejected the chance to join LIV Golf in 2022 because he didn’t want to miss out on golf’s four major championships.

Players only automatically qualify for golf’s four majors – the Masters, the Open, the US Open and the US PGA – if they’ve won a major inside the last five years or sit high enough in the world rankings.

Currently, LIV golfers do not receive world ranking points but the likes of Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Patrick Reed, Dustin Johnson and Sergio Garcia all have exemptions into at least one of the four majors, if not all four.

Rose, a 2013 US Open champion is the world number 45 having played his way back into the top-50 last year and he feels quitting the PGA Tour would be too much of a risk.

“I might have done like two-plus, two-plus, three years ago or something, at least had a conversation around it,” the Englishman said of a previous LIV offer.

“But for me it was always I could never get comfortable with the giving up on the childhood dreams of the majors and I just couldn’t see that changing anytime soon. I was in a position, a situation where I was having to earn my way into them so I didn’t have those long-term exemptions to buffer it.”

Two-time major winner Justin Thomas feels that Major Championship success will continue to be the yardstick with which golfers on all tours are judged, including those who’ve been generating headlines for their decision to make the switch to LIV Golf.

“I think that the storylines in my opinion will continue to be if those guys play well in major championships and win major championships. I think that’s more of a storyline I would think than they could create on that tour,” he said.

“I don’t really know enough about what’s going on at LIV to even kind of give a storyline. I think at the end of the day the guys that are out there that are still if you want to call it kind of in their prime or can still play their best golf, I would say that their priorities are still set on the majors versus their season out there.”