It’s been an exasperating few years for a former world No.1 on the LIV Golf League…
Martin Kaymer will be the first to admit he has underwhelmed on LIV Golf.
Kaymer has registered just three top-10 finishes across his four seasons since joining the breakaway league in 2022, but there has also been plenty of mitigation for this long and painful slump.
“I’ve fought so many injuries,” he sighs. “The last four years has been extremely disappointing and that’s why I’ve hated the the results that I created out here on the LIV Golf tour so far.
“I have not been healthy and this really pissed me off because it’s a new start and you want to do well and you’ve been always been held back.”
A wrist problem has long plagued Kaymer, the captain of the Cleeks GC team, and he has the air of a man desperate to make up for ample lost time.
“Everything is sorted out now with my injuries and, hopefully this year, I need to prove it to myself first if I can still win golf tournaments,” he tells TG at a LIV season preview event in West Palm Beach.
“Once I’ve proven that to myself, then I think there there’s no nothing really can hold you back because you’ve done it before.”
Kaymer, now 41, has just signed a “long-term” contract extension with LIV and has still managed to bank almost $9 million in prize money during a period of his career riddled with frustration.
But his name has also been absent from leaderboards for far too long.
It is easy to forget, of course, that this is a player who first rose to world No.1 and then won two major championships. In the 2014 US Open at Pinehurst, Kaymer turned golf’s most uncompromising major into a procession when he won by eight shots. Incredibly, he has not won a tournament since.
But the German insists the fire still burns and he is clearly desperate to get back involved in the Ryder Cup – where he enjoyed the most emotionally-charged moment of his career at Medinah in 2012.
“If you play one Ryder Cup, and especially the experiences that I had at Ryder Cups, it’s something that is still the ultimate feeling,” Kaymer says. “No other tour will ever get to that satisfaction of success in that team environment. We have a good team spirit here, but the Ryder Cup is a very different animal.”
In the 2021 match at Whistling Straits, Kaymer served as one of Padraig Harrington’s European assistants during the humiliating defeat by a rampant American side. It was a responsibility that Kaymer admits came too soon.
“I’ve been the vice captain before and it’s an honour to do that,” he says. “But at the same time it was extremely difficult because it was only four or five years ago.
“So I was still only in my mid 30s. There was a wrong timing to do it because vice captains, for me is more like, you know, they’re almost done with their career. So I would love to be part of the Ryder Cup [again], as a player as a captain, I would really like to do that.”
Of course, for Kaymer to have a chance of being back involved, he will need to return to the DP World Tour. But he would incur fines for playing in conflicting LIV events if he was to rejoin, so is hesitant to return until the landscape settles.
“To be honest the uncertainty is the most difficult thing,” he said. “We saw [with Brooks Koepka going back to the PGA Tour via Returning Members Program] that it can change so quickly.
“Some rules being made up overnight and then all of a sudden things work or they don’t work so for me, I just don’t want to be in that in the situation where I sign up for something that I don’t know what is happening.
“You can argue there was the same thing with LIV but with LIV there was a vision behind it. There was a clear plan behind it. The people that I talked to, they were very committed to that goal. I would really really enjoy and love playing on the DP World Tour. That still is my home.
“Obviously I play here now, but I would always consider The European Tour as my home because of the people, the success, the experiences and the memories that I’ve made there.”
