After PGA Tour-LIV deal, players just want to focus on the U.S. Open - ESPN

LOS ANGELES — Tiger Woods' agent stood at the back of the U.S. Open news conference Monday afternoon and began shaking his head from side to side, his expression part grimace, part smile. One of agent Mark Steinberg's other clients was at the podium, and a pointed question hung in the air as reigning U.S. Open winner Matt Fitzpatrick paused before speaking.

Do you feel like you should be compensated for not going to LIV?

Seconds passed as Fitzpatrick extended an «uhhh» and eventually landed on pleading the Fifth.

«Yeah, pass,» he said. In the back, Steinberg smiled and nodded.

While it was unclear whether Steinberg's head shake was a sign to get Fitzpatrick to say he shouldn't be compensated or he shouldn't answer the question at all, the moment shed light on a situation that Fitzpatrick himself identified.

«The whole thing is confusing, it was confusing last year,» Fitzpatrick said of the latest chapter in the LIV-PGA Tour saga. «I seem to remember just last year just thinking about the [2022 U.S. Open]. It was obviously different because I had the tie to the golf course and the history there, so it was probably easier for me to mentally focus on that and be in a better place than obviously all this confusion that's going on this week.»

A year after the golf world descended on Brookline, Massachusetts, for the U.S. Open with the LIV Golf series taking off and Phil Mickelson, among other LIV players, back in the spotlight after bolting from the PGA Tour, the tournament has once again been thrust in the center of the madness.

«We do feel a sense of déjà vu,» USGA president Mike Whan said in a statement to ESPN. «A year ago we were sitting just outside Boston the week after the first LIV event, and the early part of the