Justin Thomas, Rory McIlroy voice approval of decision to not let LIV Golf players into FedEx Cup Playoffs

U.S. District Court Judge Beth Labson Freeman ruled against the three members of the LIV Golf Series Tuesday after they had filed a temporary restraining order against the PGA Tour. The restraining order was filed in an attempt to allow the trio (Talor Gooch, Matt Jones and Hudson Swafford) to compete in the upcoming FedEx Cup Playoffs, which begin Thursday with the St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind.

Among those to approve of Tuesday's ruling were four-time major champion Rory McIlroy and two-time major victor Justin Thomas. Both McIlroy and Thomas are members of the PGA Tour.

"From my vantage point, common sense prevailed, and I thought it was the right decision," McIlroy said Wednesday, per ESPN's Mark Schlabach. "Now that that has happened, I think it just lets us focus on the important stuff, which is golf. We can all move forward and not have that sideshow going on for the next few weeks, which is nice.""It was personal to me from the beginning," Thomas added. "It's kind of like I said from the start. Those guys were given an opportunity to go play and just go play. You can have your cake, but you don't need to eat it, too. And they got their fair share of a large, large amount of cake, and go eat it on your own means. You don't need to bring it onto our tour."

The PGA Tour's motion to keep Gooch, Jones and Swafford out of the playoffs came on the heels of the three players -- as well as eight other members of LIV Golf including Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau -- filing an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour in federal court last week.

On Tuesday, prior to the ruling, world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler -- a member of the PGA Tour -- called the situation "frustrating." In her ruling on Tuesday, Freeman said the three golfers knew what privileges they were giving up when they chose to play for exorbitant amounts of money with LIV Golf.

"It appears to the court that the LIV contracts, negotiated by the players and consummated between the parties, were based upon the players' calculation of what they would be leaving behind and the amount the players would need to monetize to compensate for those losses," she said, per ESPN. "I do agree with the defendants [the PGA Tour] that those losses were well known to the players at the time and clearly monetized."

According to Schlabach, while Freeman's ruling denied the temporary restraining order, she didn't rule on the LIV golfers' antitrust claims. The next step in the process will be a jury trial in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California.