Prepared and qualified: Gooch ready to take the reins as Smash GC captain

When LIV Golf launched in the summer of 2022 with its inaugural event in London, Talor Gooch was one of the league’s 12 captains. As part of his duties as leader of Torque GC, he was responsible for drafting three players to complete his roster. Torque – pronounced with one syllable back then as opposed to the current two-syllable iteration – finished fourth that week, just two shots shy of the podium. It was a dynamic time, and Gooch embraced every moment.

But it was also one-and-done as Torque captain. Before the next tournament in Portland, Oregon, Gooch joined Dustin Johnson ’s 4Aces GC as part of LIV Golf’s first dominant lineup, with the team reeling off four consecutive regular-season wins, along with the Team Championship. Gooch was a key part of that success – but he also never forgot his brief time in charge.

“Ever since then, I’ve had the goal to somehow, someway, get back in that type of position,” he said.

Goal achieved, as Gooch enters the upcoming 2026 LIV Golf season as Smash GC captain, taking over for the departed Brooks Koepka. It’s the first time in league history that a non-captain player has been elevated into a full-time captain’s role. Considering Gooch’s success since joining LIV Golf, no one is more deserving of that promotion.

He leads all non-captains with most career individual tournament wins (four) and is the only non-captain to win the season-long Individual Championship, fueled by his three wins during the 2023 season. He’s also the only player to celebrate team tournament titles with three different teams (4Aces GC, RangeGoats GC and Smash GC). Overall, he’s raised 13 LIV Golf trophies, either as an individual or with a team. The only player who can match that is reigning two-time Individual Champion Jon Rahm, the Legion XIII captain.

Gooch has proven his worth as one of LIV Golf’s key performers, but he doesn’t view his captain’s role as a chance to simply enhance his individual reputation. His perspective is much broader.

“I’m more excited about the opportunity to build what this team is,” he said. “That has nothing to do with just Talor Gooch the individual. I think most people in sports, especially like me who grew up playing team sports, like being a part of something bigger than yourself. The sum is better than the one. Being a part of something that has so much potential, so much upside and can be so much fun – well, it’s just such a unique experience in our world.”

It’s a role the 34-year-old Gooch has been preparing for the last few years. Playing under Johnson with the 4Aces, Bubba Watson with the RangeGoats and Koepka the last two years at Smash, he’s seen how those multiple major winners have approached the captaincy. Each had a distinct style, and Gooch was able to pull traits from each one that helped shape his own views.

“DJ was very hands off,” Gooch said. “It was easy to be hands off when our team was really good.”

Watson, meanwhile, was returning from major knee surgery when Gooch joined the RangeGoats in 2023 and struggled to regain his form that year. “He was trying to be the best leader he could be without playing great,” said Gooch, who enjoyed his best individual success under Watson. “He was very supportive.”

One of the reasons Gooch jumped to Smash in 2024 was to learn from Koepka, who offered to loop in Gooch on front-office processes as the league continued to evolve and grow. “He wanted me to be alongside the growth in the future of what Smash looked like – not just from making birdies, but from a decision-making perspective and leadership perspective,” he said. “And I said to him, I only want to make this move if I can kind of have a voice in this thing.”

Added Gooch: “I think I’ve been on more teams than anybody. Each of those teams has its own personality and own way of going about things. It’s put me in a unique position, having seen things that has worked and things that haven’t, seeing how teammates and players react to certain decisions. I’ve been very aware of those things and have taken notes. I’ve been able to formulate what, in my opinion, is the best way to handle things as a team, as a captain and as an organization.”

Along the way, his personal portfolio evolved, as he became the owner of a Professional Bull Riders team in his native Oklahoma as well as a Sports Fishing Championship team in Mississippi. Being at the top of the pyramid, certainly from a financial perspective, also offered another opportunity to sharpen his leadership skills.

“It all comes back to winning and playing well and putting your team and your franchise in a position to succeed,” Gooch said. “We’ve had some struggles with the PBR team and you’re trying to figure out ways like, how do we succeed as a franchise? How do we win more games? How do we perform better? How do we put our players, our athletes in a position to thrive? That comes down to an organization being in a place to simplify things so that the players, athletes, coaches don’t have to worry about anything other than going out and playing the best they can.”

A huge Oklahoma City Thunder fan, Gooch also has taken note of how his hometown team rose to the top of the NBA with last season’s championship. He talks about the importance of the team’s culture, its executive team that has stayed intact, staffers who remained dedicated through the years. He illustrated his fondness for the team’s approach with a story told by the team’s top player, reigning NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

“He talked about day one when he came into the facility, he saw all the basketball racks in the practice facility and noticed that all the Wilson logos on the basketballs were facing the same direction,” Gooch recalled. “He said he had never noticed such attention to detail within an organization. It’s little nuggets like that that I pay attention to because winning doesn’t just happen by chance.”

Success in LIV Golf, of course, comes from shooting the lowest scores. Gooch will control only one of the team’s four scores that count in each round, but he hopes the approach he applies to his own game can be extended to the team’s performance. He’s long referred to it as the Rule of 67 – if you shoot 67, everything else takes care of itself. When Gooch won the Individual Championship in 2023, 16 of his 39 regular-season rounds were 67 or better. And when he won LIV Golf Andalucía in 2025, his second-round 66 was just one of six rounds of 67 or better that week.

“Our team is going to be focused on shooting 67,” Gooch explained. “Whatever it takes to make that happen, that’s what we’re going to do. It’s a good way of making a very complex, very complicated system pretty simple.”

Of course, the phrase “67” has taken on a perplexing life of its own lately, as any confused parent of a teenager well knows. Said Gooch with a laugh, “Maybe I should have trademarked it.”

While Gooch was ahead of the curve in that regard, he’s right on track with his rise – or if you prefer, return – to captaincy. He’s exactly where he wants to be and the timing is perfect. He considers his career path to be very similar to LIV Golf’s trajectory.

“I’m way more prepared now, for all the obvious reasons,” he said. “And I think part of it is also the maturation of the league. In the beginning, there was so much turmoil, and I didn’t mind playing the villain in that role. It was easy for me to try to get people going with some of the comments I had.

“Now the more mature Talor Gooch is able to look at things a little bit differently with this new direction we’re going as a league. We still want to be different and make progress and gravitate towards different people, bring new eyeballs to this great game, but in a way that isn’t as polarizing. We want to do this in a positive way, and I’m excited for that. It’s going to be a fun journey, and I can’t wait to be a part of it.”