LIV Golf’s fifth season got underway this week under the lights in Saudi Arabia. But the focus hasn’t been on the golf.
The week began with additional questions about the departures of Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed. While the response to the exit of two marquee names highlighted the league’s new reality, something else sucked up all the oxygen at the breakaway league’s season-opener.
On Tuesday, the Official World Golf Rankings board announced that it had accepted LIV’s application for membership and that the league will begin earning points this week in Riyadh. However, it was not all sunshine and rainbows for the Saudi-backed league. While LIV will receive points starting this week, the OWGR board noted that the points will be limited to top-10 finishes and ties.
“This has been an incredibly complex and challenging process and one which we have devoted a huge amount of time and energy to resolving in the seven months since LIV Golf submitted their application,” OWGR chairman Trevor Immelman said in a statement. “We fully recognized the need to rank the top men’s players in the world but at the same time had to find a way of doing so that was equitable to the thousands of other players competing on other tours that operate with established meritocratic pathways.”
The OWGR board’s decision has loomed over LIV’s season opener as players and CEO Scott O’Neil grapple with its implications.
O’Neil spoke with Al Arabiya English during LIV Riyadh and tried to parse through a decision that opens up a path to major championship eligibility for LIV players, but, in their eyes, is still not good enough.
“Can you imagine the commission of the PGA [Tour], the head of the DP World Tour, and so, from our perspective, what a great vote of confidence for them to say, ‘Okay, we’ll give you points,’” O’Neil said.
“Now, on the other hand, it’s a bit unprecedented. You know, in every other event that they have across the hundreds of tours that they sanction, if there are no cuts, only 15 percent of the field gets no points. In our case, it’s 82 percent of the field. So that didn’t feel great, you know. And I’m hoping that this is the first step of many steps up the flight of stairs where we’ll actually be ranked and recognized, where we actually should be, which I think is the greatest, deepest, most talented, strongest strength of field, international golf in the world.”
Jon Rahm echoed O’Neil’s sentiment but believes LIV isn’t getting the respect it deserves, given the talent in the league.
“Yeah, it’s fantastic that we’re getting points,” Rahm said on the LIV Golf broadcast. “It’s fantastic that we’re being recognized in a way.
“With that said, I don’t like how we’re not being treated the same as every other tour. It seems like the rules that have been in place don’t really apply to us, with only ten of us getting points. It doesn’t seem fair. The small fields out there throughout the course of the year, their players get full points.”
Talor Gooch, who has been on LIV since its inception, believes the league is still being unfairly treated because of its status as a disruptor in professional golf.
“I don’t think the right thing was done, which is not any different than what we’ve experienced here at LIV for the last four or five seasons now,” Gooch said. “It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. But I think anybody who says that the right thing was done and the fair thing was done, I don’t think they’re in tune with the reality of things.”
However, another original LIV Golf member took a different view of the OWGR’s decision.
Peter Uihlein was quick to compare the number of points LIV earns against the DP World Tour’s Qatar Masters this week and sees it as a clear step toward further legitimacy for the league.
“I might be one of the few that like it,” he said. “We have more world ranking points today than we did yesterday. I saw the winner gets 23 points this week. In Qatar, he gets 20. In my min,d we’re the second-best tour in the world right now. Obviously, there are things that probably need to get worked out with the top ten or whatever, but the reality is we have more points today than we did yesterday. I’m all for it.”
As No Laying Up’s Chris Solomon pointed out on X, the player who finishes sixth at LIV Riyadh will get the same number of points as the player who finishes 20th at this week’s Waste Management Phoenix Open. Given the size of the fields and the quality of players in each, LIV’s seemingly did pretty well.
Elivis Smylie won in his LIV debut, taking home the 23.03580 projected OWGR points for first place. Bryson DeChambeau, meanwhile, finished T17, leaving Saudi Arabia without an OWGR boost and with questions about his LIV future still hanging in the air as the league heads to Australia.
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