[Photo: Manuel Velasquez]<\/p>\n
LIV Golf will receive Official World Golf Ranking points beginning this week at its season-opening event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
RELATED: LIV Golf resubmits application for Official World Golf Ranking points<\/a><\/p>\n It is the first time in the league\u2019s five-year existence that it qualifies for world ranking points. LIV events will be ranked based on OWGR\u2019s standard classification of \u2018Small Field Tournaments\u2019 with a \u2018Ranking points distribution cutoff\u2019 applied to award points to players who finish in the top 10 (and ties). The winner will receive the projected equivalent of an alternate-event champion on the PGA Tour.<\/p>\n \u201cThis 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<\/a>,\u201d said Trevor Immelman, chairman of OWGR. \u201cWe fully recognised the need to rank the top men\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWe believe we have found a solution that achieves these twin aims and enables the best-performing players at LIV Golf events to receive OWGR points. I would like to acknowledge the substantial and constructive efforts made by Scott O\u2019Neil and the team at LIV Golf. We look forward to working with them on implementing this approach with immediate effect for the 2026 LIV Golf season.\u201d<\/p>\n The OWGR board stated LIV rewarded points despite falling short on several standards, specifically the \u201cself-selection of players with players being recruited rather than earning their place on the tour in many cases and, in recent days, the addition\/removal of players to\/from teams based on their nationality rather than for meritocratic reasons\u201d.<\/p>\n However, in a release, LIV Golf officials sounded off on the decision, feeling it did not reward the league enough.<\/p>\n \u201cWe acknowledge this long\u2011overdue moment of recognition, which affirms the fundamental principle that performance on the course should matter, regardless of where the competition takes place,\u201d read the statement. \u201cHowever, this outcome is unprecedented. Under these rules, a player finishing 11th in a LIV Golf event is treated the same as a player finishing 57th. Limiting points to only the top 10 finishers disproportionately harms players who consistently perform at a high level but finish just outside that threshold, as well as emerging talent working to establish themselves on the world stage \u2013 precisely the players a fair and meritocratic ranking system is designed to recognise.<\/p>\n \u201cNo other competitive tour or league in OWGR history has been subjected to such a restriction. We expect this is merely a first step toward a structure that fully and fairly serves the players, the fans, and the future of the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n The Saudi-backed circuit fought for OWGR accreditation for years before the board rejected its initial application in 2023, questioning the league\u2019s \u201ccompetitive integrity\u201d. The OWGR cited two fatal flaws: LIV\u2019s 54-hole, no-cut format with 48-player fields, and the restricted pathways both for players to join the circuit and for underperformers to exit it. Then-chief executive Greg Norman<\/a> and multiple LIV members attacked the board for stalling the application while LIV players plummeted down the ranking. The league denounced the rankings as flawed and inaccurate even as officials scrambled to penetrate the system. LIV attempted to bypass the process entirely by partnering with the obscure MENA Tour, calculating that the association would funnel World Ranking points to its members. The OWGR rejected the manoeuvre, citing insufficient notice and inadequate review time. LIV officials eventually abandoned the campaign.<\/p>\n Several players \u2013 most notably Joaquin Niemann and Tyrrell Hatton \u2013 travelled to circuits around the globe to prevent their standing from collapsing and preserve their major-championship eligibility. Those who stayed had to rely on major performance alone, causing marquee names like Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka to tumble down the rankings. Hatton is currently the top-ranked LIV player \u2013 thanks to a strong US Open showing at Oakmont and high finishes at DP World Tour events \u2013 at 22nd in the OWGR.<\/p>\n However, when Scott O\u2019Neil replaced Norman last year, he launched a renewed campaign for OWGR points. The offensive included enforcing promotion and relegation through the points list \u2013 ending the practice of retaining certain LIV players for \u201cbusiness reasons\u201d \u2013 creating a promotions event, and, most critically, abandoning the 54-hole format that was supposed to anchor LIV\u2019s identity. While Rahm has championed the change, LIV\u2019s biggest star, Bryson DeChambeau, recently attacked it. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely changed away from what we had initially been told it was going to be,\u201d DeChambeau told Today\u2019s Golfer<\/a>. \u201cSo there is some movement that we\u2019ve all been, I would say, interested in, and going, \u2018why that movement?\u2019 Because we were told it was going to be this. So that\u2019s definitely made us have some different thoughts about it.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve got a contract for this year, and we\u2019ll go through it there and see what happens after that,\u201d DeChambeau continued. \u201cLook, it\u2019s 72 holes, it\u2019s changed, but we\u2019re still excited to play professionally and play for what we\u2019re doing and go across the world. I think it\u2019s going to be great for our [Crushers GC] team. Is it what we ultimately signed up for? No. So I think we\u2019re supposed to be different, so I\u2019m a little indifferent to it right now. Hopefully it weighs positively on me over the course of time, but you never know. I\u2019m not sure. We didn\u2019t sign up to play for 72.\u201d<\/p>\n The news come after LIV suffered back-to-back blows with Koepka<\/a> and Patrick Reed<\/a> leaving in favour of returning to the PGA Tour. The league also failed to attract another major talent, instead taking flyers on younger talent while filling out the rest of its roster with rank-and-file members of other leagues.<\/p>\n In a statement, the PGA Tour said: \u201cWe respect today\u2019s decision by the Official World Golf Ranking Governing Board and the considerable time the Board and Chairman Immelman committed to this process.\u201d<\/p>\n Entering its fifth year, LIV will have 13 individual events this season, with a team championship at the end of the campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[Photo: Manuel Velasquez] LIV Golf will receive Official World Golf Ranking points beginning this week at its season-opening…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1763,139043,100319,138824,111,43,139,69,152200,133879,213,152201],"class_list":["post-267625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-article","tag-bryson-dechambeau","tag-golf-digest","tag-liv-golf","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-official-world-golf-ranking","tag-pga-tour","tag-sports","tag-trevor-immelman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}