Join now and get your first month for just $1.<\/a><\/p>\nLIV players have watched their world ranking plummet since they jumped across to the Saudi-backed league as the organisation\u2019s bid to receive world raking points from its three round events was rejected two years ago.<\/p>\n
The change seems to be a key step towards gaining them to help players play their way into major championships, and gain greater legitimacy for the league.<\/p>\n
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Herbert, who is defending his NSW Open title in the Hunter Valley this week, said the change has come off the back of new figureheads stepping in on either side of men\u2019s professional golf\u2019s divide.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we all came across, we knew what we were signing up for,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the various times that guys came over, there were no world ranking points.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn\u2019t look like we were close to getting ranking points at any point either.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all knew what we were signing up for and I don\u2019t think there was an expectation, but the good thing about a new CEO at LIV with Scott O\u2019Neil and a new CEO at the PGA Tour with Brian Rolapp, I do think there is a vested interest in wanting to bring the game a little more.<\/p>\n
\u201cEspecially from LIV\u2019s perspective maybe making it less of a disruptive environment and wanting to fit in with the golfing ecosystem.<\/p>\n
Caption: 2024 NSW Open champion Lucas Herbert during the final round at Murray Downs. Photo: Golf NSWSource: Supplied<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see how good golf is in America, obviously with the PGA Tour, and we want to make that impact across the world on various different countries.<\/p>\n
\u201cLIV wants to fit in with that. We obviously want to play the majors. We know how important they are. The staff and the players still really care about those tournaments and it\u2019s important that we get into them.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the moment, I think the best way to get into them is through the world rankings system.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that\u2019s what Scott\u2019s working pretty hard on, to have more players competing in those tournaments.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had great representation in the majors this year. I think it\u2019s been somewhere between 25 and 30 per cent of the league has played in each major championship, which is really, really good, and it just goes to show that there is still players on LIV that are very, very competitive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey still care about their golf. They\u2019re not out there for a hit and giggle. They still really intensely care about their game, the game in general.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the 72 holes, I don\u2019t know that it was necessary to get world rankings, but I think for us it might have been low hanging fruit to get what we do on LIV alongside the other tours in terms of more of a similar product to rank players..<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe not the best way of describing that, but if all players across the world are playing four round tournaments to rank themselves, that\u2019s probably the best way to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA – FEBRUARY 14: Lucas Herbert of Ripper GC hits out of a bunker on the 12th during day one of LIV Golf Adelaide at The Grange Golf Club on February 14, 2025 in Adelaide, Australia. (Photo by Mark Brake\/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n
The big change was not player-led, according to Herbert, but rather came from the LIV hierarchy.<\/p>\n
Not that the Ripper GC star is complaining despite an extra day being added to his workload at each event.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt hasn\u2019t been a topic of conversation too often, to be honest,\u201d Herbert said of the move to 72 holes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if I\u2019m the best person to ask about a general consensus from the tour.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy take would be that I don\u2019t think players don\u2019t really care.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting to play across the world the way we do, in front of crowds the way that we play in front of, and the money we play for, we\u2019d play nine rounds if we needed to.\u201d<\/p>\n
He later added: \u201cWe probably don\u2019t get consulted and it\u2019s probably a good thing because we\u2019re good at hitting golf shots and we\u2019re kind of not the biggest geniuses when you look at the rest of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cEspecially from a business point of view, there definitely should be people like the Scott O\u2019Neil\u2019s of the world making those decisions for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
First place team champions, Matt Jones of Ripper GC, Marc Leishman of Ripper GC, Captain Cameron Smith of Ripper GC and Lucas Herbert of Ripper GC pose for a photo with the Team Champion Event Trophy after the final round of LIV Golf Miami at Trump National Doral on Sunday, April 06, 2025 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Montana Pritchard\/LIV Golf)Source: Supplied<\/p>\n
One thing that players will push for with the changes to LIV\u2019s schedule, however, is better management of travel across the globe.<\/p>\n
LIV has already announced 11 events for next year, across five continents.<\/p>\n
Herbert is hoping for some amendments with the added day of tournament play.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m contracted to play 17 events for the year. Some other guys are 15 or 14. If you\u2019re playing regularly on other tours around the world, you\u2019re probably playing 25 and up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t have thought that the four rounds would bring in the fatigue. What can get fatiguing is the travel.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously travelling a lot wider across the world than you would say on the PGA Tour.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year we had some pretty fun back-to-back weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cMexico City to Korea was maybe not the best scheduling decision they\u2019ve ever made.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith it being four rounds now, they\u2019ll probably do a much better job to be able to get that taken care of so that the players can perform really well.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, at the end of the day, we are the product and they want to see us play some really good golf.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian LIV golfer Lucas Herbert has declared that the breakaway league no longer wants to act as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[2095,64,2347,63,689,37065,3193,2791,62093,676,2755,2105,755,1745,29459,162849,162843,162848,5507,5494,62092,2184,23956,5140,2041,2067,677,62086,63841,162846,756,162851,85,102313,162850,2614,76713,162844,29739,162845,125130,37655,162847],"class_list":["post-281474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-america","tag-au","tag-august","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-australian-golfer","tag-cameron-smith","tag-central-america","tag-event-trophy","tag-final-round","tag-florida","tag-getty-images-inc","tag-golf","tag-golf-news","tag-golf-world","tag-golfing-ecosystem","tag-hole-format","tag-isaiah-vazquez","tag-lucas-herbert","tag-marc-leishman","tag-matt-jones","tag-mexico","tag-mexico-city","tag-miami","tag-north-america","tag-northern-america","tag-oceania","tag-place-team-champions","tag-professional-golf","tag-ranking-points","tag-rory-mcilroy","tag-scheduling-decision","tag-sports","tag-the-grange-golf-club","tag-tournament-play","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-west-virginia","tag-white-sulphur-springs","tag-world-ranking","tag-world-ranking-plummet","tag-world-ranking-points","tag-world-rankings","tag-world-rankings-system"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}