There’s no shortage of juicy details emerging from author Alan Shipnuck’s new book about the PGA Tour-LIV Golf soap opera, and it’s making some golfers “sick.”
Tour star Justin Thomas took a swipe at Shipnuck in response to one excerpt, in which an anonymous former Ryder Cup teammate said “f–k Rory” McIlroy and lamented that the Northern Irishman was being depicted as “some kind of hero who is saving golf.”
“I’d like to speak on behalf of a lot of Tour players and say we’re sick of @AlanShipnuck doing what he does,” Thomas, 30, wrote on X. “Bring positivity and good stories to help grow the game of golf, not try and make money bashing guys, earning zero trust, with a lot of incorrect information. Ridiculous.”
Shipnuck responded to Thomas on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“What JT wants is p.r,, or hagiography, not journalism,” Shipnuck wrote. “I’ve written many feel-good stories about golfers and the game, but scrutiny and criticism is sometimes warranted. LlV v. Tour has been incredibly divisive and I captured that. It’s not my role to whitewash things.
“Also, these quotes that are triggering folks, those are not my words! Folks on both sides of golf’s divide have been very fired up – I captured that emotion, I did not create it.”
McIlroy stood by the PGA Tour and commissioner Jay Monahan while the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour poached some of the Tour’s top stars, luring them with nine-figure contracts.
“He’s bought and paid for like everybody else, it’s just that his money is coming from the other side,” the anonymous teammate said of McIlroy in an excerpt posted by CBS Sports’ Kyle Porter. “… That he is being held up as some kind of savior on Twitter and by all the fanboys with their sh–ty podcasts tells you how little people understand what’s going on.”
After a two-year war, the Tour announced in June that it was partnering with the Saudi Public Investment Fund in a stunning about-face.
Thomas was involved in part of a different excerpt from Shipnuck’s book posted on the Fire Pit Collective, which detailed Brooks Koepka’s displeasure with being judged by some of his fellow pros for taking the LIV Golf money.
“F–k all of those country club kids who talk s–t about me,” Koepka said during a 2022 event in Ireland, in which he was said to be referring to players like Thomas and Jordan Spieth. “You think I give a f–k what they think? You think I care what people say about me? I just had three surgeries, and I’m supposed to turn down $130 million? I grew up with nothing. After signing that contract, the first person I called was my mom. We both cried.”
