LIV halts battle for ranking points

The long-running stalemate between LIV Golf and the Official World Golf Ranking has come to an abrupt end with the decision by the young league to abandon its pursuit of ranking points.

In a letter to LIV golfers this week, CEO Greg Norman informed them that the organization was no longer pursuing accreditation from the OWGR, which last year denied the rival tour’s request based largely on the team component in LIV’s model.

What does that mean?

It will be increasingly difficult, almost impossible, for LIV players who are not otherwise eligible for major championships to qualify for the game’s biggest events based on ranking points because they will have limited access to events that award points.

“We have made significant efforts to fight for you and ensure your accomplishments are recognized within the existing ranking system. Unfortunately, OWGR has shown little willingness to productively work with us,” Norman wrote in the letter obtained Tuesday by Global Golf Post.

Since its inception, Norman has assured players that they would receive world-ranking points despite the fact that LIV began its first season of play in 2022 before submitting an application to the OWGR. Norman also told LIV’s early signees that they would be allowed to continue playing the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour, though that failed to happen.

After a lengthy review process, the OWGR announced last October that the structure of LIV Golf did not meet the parameters established to qualify for points while offering guidance about changes that would allow LIV to earn points.

“Some of the format issues – 54 holes, no cut, 48 players – is capable of being dealt with mathematically in the system,” Peter Dawson, CEO of the OWGR, told Global Golf Post last fall. “Things that can’t be are team golf and individual golf [together]. But the main one is qualification and relegation criteria that apply. With contracts and team captains, there are many ways to stay on the LIV tour even if you are not playing well.

“If LIV could find a way to come up with a more open competition style and relegation, we would certainly consider that.”

LIV made some adjustments to its format – it added a handful of playing spots and adjusted the team setup so that all four player scores count during the final round instead of three scores counting the first two days – but the organization remains largely a closed shop, with players working under contracts with limited opportunities for others to earn playing spots.

“It diminishes the rankings if players like DJ [Dustin Johnson] and Bryson DeChambeau are not included. It would also diminish the ranking if the ranking rigor were reduced to include them.” – Peter Dawson

The lack of world-ranking points has led to LIV’s top players plummeting down the OWGR. Jon Rahm, who made the jump to LIV late last year, is still No. 3 in the rankings, and Tyrrell Hatton, a 2024 addition, is 17th.

Brooks Koepka, who won the 2023 PGA Championship, ranks 30th this week, Cam Smith is 50th and Joaquín Niemann, who recently won his second LIV title of the year, is 76th.

Dustin Johnson has fallen to 266th, and Sergio García is 645th. Talor Gooch, who won three times on LIV last year, ranks No. 476.

Last fall, Dawson acknowledged the impact of several top players falling down the rankings because most of the events they play do not qualify for OWGR points.

“It diminishes the rankings if players like DJ [Dustin Johnson] and Bryson DeChambeau are not included. It would also diminish the ranking if the ranking rigor were reduced to include them,” Dawson said.

“The important point is, this is not about the players. LIV players are self-evidently good enough to be ranked; there is no doubt about that. This is about, should a tour whose formats are so different and whose qualification criteria are so different, can they be ranked equitably with other tours who conform to the OWGR norm and have more competition to them than perhaps the closed shop that is LIV?”

World-ranking position is used by the major championships in determining which players automatically qualify. The Masters, for example, takes players ranked in the top 50 at the end of the calendar year and those ranked in the top 50 the week before the Masters, which this season concludes March 31 after the Texas Children’s Houston Open.

Several LIV stars, including Johnson, Koepka and Smith, have eligibility in all four majors by virtue of their major-championship victories in recent years, but others have a severely limited pathway. Rookie Caleb Surratt and recent college star Eugenio Chacarra would need to go through qualifying for the U.S. Open and the Open Championship to have access to majors at the moment.

“The rankings are structured to penalize anyone who has not played regularly on an ‘Eligible Tour,’ with the field ratings disproportionately rewarding play on the PGA Tour. This is illustrated by the fact only four players inside the top 50 are not PGA Tour players (Jon Rahm (3), Tyrrell Hatton (17), Brooks Koepka (30) and Cam Smith (45)) and by the precipitous decline of LIV players generally, notwithstanding extraordinary performances in LIV Golf events,” Norman wrote to LIV players.

“Even if LIV Golf events were immediately awarded points, the OWGR system is designed such that it would be functionally impossible for you to regain positions close to the summit of the ranking, where so many of you belong.”

Norman and LIV have argued that the OWGR board is dominated by the leaders of the game’s biggest organizations, including the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour, though both Jay Monahan and Keith Pelley, respective leaders of those tours, recused themselves from the decision about not awarding points to LIV last year.

LIV has called on the major championships to establish protocols to provide designated exemptions for players based on their performance on LIV, though no major has indicated it is willing to take that step. The Masters and PGA Championship each offered an individual exemption this year to Joaquin Niemann, who has won two of LIV’s three events so far this season.

“Having refused to recognize your performances over the last few seasons, the OWGR is not and cannot be an ‘official’ ranking. This decision will remove any ambiguity about its relevance,” Norman wrote.

“The game of golf is changing. It’s expanding and modernizing. LIV Golf believes that it is time for the player rating system to do the same and we believe that an entirely independent ranking system would best serve the League, Tours, players, fans, and stakeholders.”

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