LIV and let live
The Saudi-funded bunch of golf rebels has scored a lot of big wins in its battle with the PGA Tour, but giving up the fight for world-ranking points is a big loss
The closed nature of LIV Golf has officially become more closed.
Various reports say Greg Norman, the cantankerous LIV front man who took a step back last season but is now back at full grouch, sent a letter to LIV players informing them that the organization has stopped trying to convince the boffins at Official World Golf Ranking headquarters to let them play in their mathematical sandbox.
It’s a big deal. If luring Jon Rahm to join LIV this season was a significant coup for the Saudi-backed rebel league, then surrendering the OWGR battle seems at least as significant in the other direction. The opposite of a coup. An ambush? I’m losing the metaphor here.
Anyway. The OWGR is one of the main pathways to entry of golf’s four major championships. There are other ways to get into them (each has unique rules), but golfers who hadn’t won on the PGA Tour recently, or won a major less recently, could rely on a decent OWGR spot to ensure they didn’t miss the most important tournaments of the season.
But because LIV events don’t factor into the OWGR, players on that tour have plummeted down the rankings. Just four LIV guys are in the top 50 — Rahm, Tyrell Hatton, Brooks Koepka and Cameron Smith. Rahm and Koepka won majors last year, Hatton just jumped to LIV a couple of months ago so he still has all of last year’s PGA Tour points, and Smith won the Open Championship in 2022.
Less than two years ago, on the eve of the 2022 Masters, 20 of the players on LIV’s current roster of 52(ish) were inside the top 50 of the OWGR. That’s a lot of guys who would have gained entry into the majors who now will not. (Joaquin Niemann, who recently won the non-LIV Australian Open, has been invited to the Masters and PGA Championship.)
It’s been reported that the LIV defectors were assured by Norman and allies that this wouldn’t be a problem, that the OWGR would welcome them in once the proper math formulas were sorted out, but it’s also possible that the rebels were so enamoured with the potential for massive Saudi-backed riches that they didn’t think too hard about the implications.
Whatever the case, it presents a huge problem for LIV as a going concern, and raises more questions about whatever the hell is going on with the future of professional golf. The Saudis (and Norman) launched their breakaway league in the summer of 2022, then a year-long fight seemed to have reached a sudden peace deal last June, but the expected Saudi investment in a new for-profit pro golf entity has still not come to pass and meanwhile a bunch of billionaire U.S. sports owners threw some of their money into New Golf Entity. Oh, and the Saudis gave so much money to Rahm that he eventually couldn’t resist leaving the PGA Tour to join Phil, Bubba, DJ and the gang.
No one knows if the new golf thing is supposed to exist alongside LIV, or if it will absorb it, or if the Saudis and the PGA Tour will decided in the coming months that, in fact, they would like to resume hostilities. Norman insists that all is going swell with LIV, but he would say that.
LIV still doesn’t have broadcast deals on the types of networks that normally show golf, meaning the television audiences for its events are close to negligible. It makes news when someone like Rahm is poached, but the tournaments simply don’t register in the mainstream sports landscape. There was one in Saudi Arabia last weekend, which I only heard about because lost-in-the-wilderness Anthony Kim was making his pro comeback after 11 years. (He finished last, by some distance.)
And now, the surrendering of hope for OWGR points means that LIV players who aren’t already major champions will have vanishingly few ways to play their way into golf’s biggest events. Sorry for going full Jim Nantz here, but the majors are how golfers define their careers, their legacies. (Tinkling piano music over shot of azaleas.)
After the LIV players stopped pretending that they defected to “grow the game” and other obviously bullshit reasons, they said more honestly that the calculation was a simple one: LIV has fewer tournaments, and a lot more money being sloshed around. Less work, more cake. Fair enough, if you don’t mind working for one of the world’s most repressive regimes. But even that deal was a lot more attractive when LIV players weren’t also putting themselves at a significant disadvantage in trying to qualify for the four major fields. Now that it’s clear that the disadvantage will be ongoing, how many LIV guys are going to be taking a closer look at the out clauses of their contracts?
Norman, not surprisingly, blames the OWGR board, saying it has been unwilling “to work productively with us.”
But what exactly was the OWGR board supposed to do? Comparing the PGA Tour to LIV is like apples to elephants. LIV has its 48 guys, up to 52 this season after they added Rahm, Hatton and two others, plus the odd injury fill-in. There are no cuts, ever, the tournaments are 54 holes, and only the bottom few players are removed and replaced at season’s end. Phil Mickelson had one top-10 in 13 events last year, and that was 10th. Ian Poulter didn’t finish better than 11th. Lee Westwood’s best finish was 17th. They all finished, obviously, inside the top 48.
Mackenzie Hughes, meanwhile, finished 51st in the FedEx Cup standings, playing in 30 events, winning one, finishing second in another, and with two more top-10s. Who had the better year?
Or consider the case of Jake Knapp. Two seasons ago he was playing on PGA Tour Canada at places like Osprey Valley. He earned his way on to the Korn Ferry Tour for last season, earned his way on to the PGA Tour for this season, and already has three top-5 finishes, including a win. He’s still just at 45th in the OWGR. If the LIV guys were getting world-ranking points on the fat-and-sassy tour, Knapp would be dozens of places lower, behind guys who just have to show up to get paid.
Norman, meanwhile, says he will work directly with the four major tournaments in hopes that they will change their entry criteria to allow more LIV fellas in. That’s probably not all that comforting to a pro now realizing that he has no chance to play his way in to, say, the Masters.
But, you make your bed, et cetera.