The Official World Golf Rankings board doled out a decision to LIV Golf earlier this week that it would not receive OWGR points throughout its future tournaments. This was a blow to a league that had been waiting over a year to hear back from the organization, and it reshaped the way LIV thinks about the future and perhaps even the way major championship fields are constructed.
There is no simplistic way to consider the two entities together. The implications of this decision touch nearly everything in the golf world and, oh yeah, might even be rendered moot if the framework deal between the PGA Tour and Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia goes through.
You will see — and probably already have seen — a lot of information from a variety of parties regarding this decision. The plethora of angles from which you can come at is astounding and borderline overwhelming. And while I’m not sure there’s a through line to be found in all of this, I do have a lot of thoughts about what it means for the future of professional golf. Let’s get to them.
1. Closed loop
The primary issue the OWGR has with LIV is not that it is played over 54 holes or that it is a team event or that it does not have a cut or even that its fields are relatively small (under 50 players). No, the primary issue the OWGR has with LIV is that it is impossible for some players — the ones with long-term contracts like Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson — to fall out of the league. While there is technically relegation (there will be four new golfers in the league in 2024), it is selective relegation, meaning that no matter how bad some of those high-profile players are they will never not be in the league.
This makes sense because none of them would have agreed to play the LIV Golf circuit if not for the guarantees. But it is also sensible for the OWGR to look at that structure and render it illegitimate compared to all the other golf leagues it governs. The OWGR would not be measuring equitable entities, which is one of its stated intentions.
2. Antiquated system
One of the themes you will hear from LIV players is that the OWGR should now be considered an outdated system. While I disagree with their disagreement, there is some legitimacy to this claim. Bryson DeChambeau is ranked outside the top 100 in the OWGR and nobody in the world thinks he’s anything other than a top 100 golfer in the world right now. There are mathematical solutions for this, of course. Data Golf ranks all golfers based on their strokes gained numbers (more or less how good they are at scoring compared to their peers). DeChambeau ranks in the top 30 in that metric, which is more reasonable.
What we are witnessing is really a line of demarcation for what some of these systems are. The OWGR, to me, is now a governing body of sorts, ensuring that all leagues are created (mostly) equal, while Data Golf is now the place to go for pure “who is the best golfer in the world” rankings. This is not bad. It’s just different than it has ever been before.
3. Why is LIV inequitable
There is an argument floating around — and in fact proposed by a number of smart people — that it is not the job of various golf leagues to cater to the OWGR but rather the job of the OWGR to simply measure the best players. Again, this is not unreasonable. However, as mentioned above, it has become clear that the OWGR’s primary job is to ensure that leagues which includes players it ranks must comply to a set of standards with which LIV is unwilling to comply.
To drive home why it’s maybe not great that LIV is a closed loop, consider the following scenario: What if LIV offered me, say, a $50 million contract to play golf, and what if I agreed to that contract? All of a sudden, I, with zero skill as a professional golfer, would have access to OWGR points (and thus major championship status) just because LIV wanted me in their league. Whether you agree with this philosophically almost does not matter. What matters is how fundamentally different this is from every other golf league that has players which the OWGR ranks.
4. What will the major championships do?
This is a fascinating question that I have been considering a lot. The people who voted on this — the PGA Tour and DP World Tour recused themselves — are the same people who run the major championships. The OWGR board is made up of representatives from the four major championship organizations, both big tours and one from the International Federation of PGA Tours.
So, in theory, those organizations are boxing LIV golfers out of the majors. In reality, though, it is almost undeniable that each individual major field will not be representative of the best players in the world. The OWGR chairman, Peter Dawson, even called out Sergio Garcia and Dustin Johnson by name as some of the best players in the world, putting the burden back on LIV to comply. The major organizations could theoretically change their criteria — this happens all the time — to include, say, the top five players from LIV. This would ensure that these events still have all the best players. This would be a bit odd considering they could have just voted them in via the OWGR, but it’s something to watch going forward.
5. Won’t this not matter in a few months anyway?
Again, in theory (all of this is theoretical, it seems), none of this even matters. The PGA Tour is in line to merge with the Public Investment Fund, and it seems as if everything will eventually come back under the same roof. In that case, it’s easy to see the path for players like DeChambeau and D.J. receiving OWGR points again (depending on how their contracts play out and how LIV plays out). However, the Tour’s deal with the PIF is still in the framework stage and could easily fall apart. If that does happen and LIV doubles down on its efforts to form a new golf league, then suddenly these points matter more than ever. If this is the case, the Tour would be in a position of strength as no OWGR points would dissuade players from switching tours.
There are obviously a lot of moving parts here and a lot of different ways all of this could potentially play out. But, for now, this is a blow to a league that could have used some good news as leverage if the deal between the Tour and the PIF does not get done.