LIV Golf supremo With no ranking points awarded in LIV events, players in the breakaway tournament are continuing to fall down the leaderboard, prompting Greg Norman to criticize the Official World Golf Ranking.
Commissioner of LIV Golf Greg Norman has renewed his assault on the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) in an effort to gain recognition for the breakaway tour supported by Saudi Arabia.
Since its founding in 2022, LIV has drawn some of the top players in the world, but the tour is not approved by the OWGR. A ruling in October concluded that the tour did not meet the OWGR’s requirements due to a number of reasons, including the 54-hole format of LIV, its team competition, and the absence of a sufficient qualifying procedure.
As a result, many of the tour’s players have fallen far down the rankings, making it impossible for them to advance to the major championships unless they find another way to qualify. While recent major championship victories have guaranteed the spots of players like Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, and Cameron Smith in the big four events, other players like 2023 LIV Golf champion Talor Gooch and former Ryder Cup stars Sergio Garcia, Lee Westwood, and Ian poulter has to miss out.
Following the ruling, the two-time major champion Norman and several of his players attacked the OWGR; the Australian then echoed these criticisms on Monday in response to the most recent rankings release.
Laughable, Norman wrote when he shared a photo of the OWGR top 50 on Instagram with the rankings from Sports Illustrated, The Universal Golf Ranking, and Data Golf. If you take away the new signings, LIV would have two players in the top 50 OWGR!”
Although three of LIV’s players—Rahm, Tyrrell Hatton, and Adrian Meronk—are recent additions to the OWGR top 50, they gained their spots primarily through accomplishments on the PGA Tour in the previous season.
Koepka, who shot well at The Masters and won the PGA Championship the previous year, is the highest-ranked original member of LIV’s roster at 29. Smith, a native of Norman, is meanwhile holding onto 44th place in the rankings as a result of his victory at The Open Championship in 2022.
But two of the big names LIV stole from the PGA Tour when it first started, Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau, have fallen to 231 and 169 in the rankings, respectively, and they will lose their spots in major championships when their exemptions from major wins in 2020 expire.
Smith’s argument that the OWGR has lost credibility following the October decision is strengthened by the fact that eight to ten LIV players are included in the top 50 of the other three rankings Norman cited.
“I believe it is nearly outdated at this point,” the 30-year-old stated. Some guys here aren’t even in the top 200 or 100 players in the world, yet they play some of the best golf there is. It’s really absurd.”
In agreement with his LIV Golf opponent, the former US Open and Masters champion Johnson said, “I feel like you can’t really use the world ranking system anymore.” That’s how I see it. It’s difficult to apply the world ranking system if 48 talented players are being left out. The order is not fair. I’m not as affected by it as some of the other guys are. For the other guys, I want the points.”
Months of negotiations have not produced a resolution, but the PGA Tour and LIV Golf’s backers, the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, are still in talks about a merger deal that could reopen more routes for LIV players to get ranking points.
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