SAN DIEGO — The LIV Golf League added to its roster by signing NCAA champion Michael La Sasso. It also removed from its league Jinichiro Kozuma, who finished 32nd in the standings last season with three top 10s, including a runner-up finish in Dallas.
Both were curious moves as the Official World Golf Ranking tries to decide whether LIV should get ranking points.
OWGR chairman Trevor Immelman said last month that one hurdle in LIV’s application was that a vast majority of its players were invited to join instead of earning their way, different from the other 24 tours that are part of the OWGR system.
“That’s one of the beauties of our sport is earning your way onto a tour, fighting to keep your job on that tour,” Immelman said at the PNC Championship.
The OWGR board is to meet on Wednesday, and while a vote on LIV was not believed to be on the agenda, there’s a chance a decision could be forthcoming by the end of the week.
Ahead of his first PGA Tour event since 2022, Brooks Koepka discussed the factors that went into his decision to leave LIV.
The OWGR last month decided that 54- and 36-hole tournaments would have a reduction in points, whether 54 holes was the standard or there was an interruption in play because of weather.
LIV, meanwhile, already announced it was increasing to 72 holes. It also created more pathways through qualifying, though its percentage of turnover still lags well behind other tours.
But with the fifth season of the Saudi-funded league a week way, how the rosters are formed raised more questions for the OWGR to consider in Wednesday’s meeting.
Players out of the top 48 were relegated from the league, a list that includes Henrik Stenson. But four players from the “open” zone (24th through 48th) were not retained — Kevin Na, Jinichiro Kozuma, Max Lee and Matt Jones.
Kozuma told Sports Illustrated that he didn’t learn he would not be part of the Iron Heads — rebranded as Korea Golf Club — until reading about it on social media. He said he reached out to other teams to see if there would be a spot.
“What I found was that teams seemed to be building their rosters not only based on results but also based on team identity and the type of player profile they were looking for,” Kozuma said in an email to SI translated by his manager. “In that sense, I think it was simply difficult to find the right fit for me within the available team openings at that time.”
Six of the 13 teams have all four players born in the same country.
As far as meritocracy, LIV added players like Thomas Detry, Byeong Hun An and Victor Perez, who held membership in other tours.
La Sasso was No. 3 in PGA Tour University ranking. Only the top player advances to the PGA Tour, though La Sasso would have had full Korn Ferry Tour status if he had stayed in the top 10.