Captain Koepka Lays Into Team-Mate Wolff

If anyone in the world of golf is going to tell it like it is then Brooks Koepka is a good place to start. The American is the captain of Smash GC in the LIV Golf League and Matthew Wolff is part of his four-strong line-up.

But, in an interview with Sports Illustrated, the five-time major winner was pretty damning of the 24-year-old even though he remains part of the team.

Wolff caught the headlines when he withdrew after the second round of the Washington event in May which was reportedly a cause of a Koepka-led work-out at 6.30am on the Saturday.

Wolff's details have been partially scrubbed from the team's social media bios, and he's playing this week in London, but that didn't stop Koepka saying what he thought.

“I mean, when you quit on your round, you give up and stuff like that, that's not competing,” said Koepka. “I'm not a big fan of that. You don't work hard. It's very tough. It's very tough to have even like a team dynamic when you've got one guy that won't work, one guy is not going to give any effort, he’s going to quit on the course, break clubs, gets down, bad body language, it's very tough. I've basically given up on him – a lot of talent, but I mean the talent's wasted.”

Wolff actually began the LIV season well with three finishes of 12th or better but, since then, his form has dropped off a bit of a cliff.

“I'm here, you know, trying to do what I can to play the best round of golf and that's going to help the team,” Wolff told Sports Illustrated. “I'm just here to focus on myself and try to play some good golf and that's what everyone's really trying to do because golf is trying to put the best score up and then if that helps your team it's great.”

Wolff was part of a threesome who many believed were the next big things in the game, the other two were Collin Morikawa and Viktor Hovland. Wolff then won on his third PGA Tour start, where he beat Morikawa and Bryson DeChambeau with a closing eagle, and he actually led the US Open the following year before DeChambeau took his revenge.

The following season he took two months off to deal with his mental health.