One of the main stated aims of Greg Norman’s breakaway LIV Golf venture was to shake up the world of the professional game. To that end, he is most certainly succeeding.
For months now professional golf has found itself in an ever-deepening pit of chaos, stumbling between legal battles and injunctions and the fine print of anti-trust law.
So tedious have these circular arguments become that the starting point of the Great LIV Debate — concerns about sportswashing from the Saudi Arabian government, who are bankrolling the league to the tune of many hundreds of millions of dollars — is now almost completely ignored.
The most current hoopla surrounds Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) points, the system that effectively judges which players are the best in the world compared to their peers. Among other things, this system is used to aid in qualification for some major tournaments.
The LIV events, the sixth of which is to be held in Thailand this week, do not currently qualify for OWGR points. This is a major point of contention for everyone involved in LIV Golf.
Players like our own Cameron Smith have publicly questioned why he is no longer eligible for ranking points, having foregone the PGA Tour to sign with LIV for somewhere around $140 million.
Norman has sent many sternly worded press releases, including one open letter co-signed by LIV players effectively saying their exclusion “undermines the historical value of OWGR”.
So why can’t LIV Golf, which boasts four former world number ones, a number of major winners and our own Smith, the reigning Open champion, qualify for ranking points?
Simply because LIV events don’t fit the OWGR’s clearly-stated criteria.
The OWGR requires events to comprise of 72 holes, which LIV does not. They require events to have a cut, which LIV does not.
They require a clear means of qualification for events, so anyone within professional golf’s wider ecosystem could theoretically compete, which LIV does not have. They require the tour to have been operational for a full year before considering an application — which generally then takes another full year — which LIV has not.
All of which opens up two potential paths for LIV to go down. They can tweak their format and stay patient, safe in the knowledge that the day will come that they will fully qualify and be un-ignorable as a sanctioned tour under OWGR rules.
Or they could go looking for loopholes.
This week, news emerged that LIV had formed a “strategic alliance” with the Middle East and North Africa Tour, a largely developmental tour that hasn’t hosted an event since pre-COVID. The plan was by getting the MENA Tour — which is eligible for OWGR points — to soak up the LIV events, they would by default be eligible for points as soon as this week.
But while those in the LIV ecosystem celebrated their genius gambit, OWGR put out a statement putting the brakes on things, saying they would need to review these late changes and would not be awarding any points until the review was complete.
Another point of contention. Another potential lawsuit in the making. Yet more disruption for disruption’s sake, as those with flags stuck in either side of the debate stick rigidly to their arguments.
As with almost anything in life, there is more than one way to look at all this. It’s never completely black and white.
Does it suck that Cameron Smith, by any metric one of the finest golfers in the world, is going to slip down the rankings because his tournaments aren’t recognized?
Of course, but he and all the other LIV players (hopefully) knew exactly what they were signing up for, and surely understood that those buckets of cash were going to carry with them some sort of catch.
Would it be cool to see Smith, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka playing a LIV event somewhere in Australia next year?
Kinda, yeah. In the same way that it’s exciting when Manchester United come to town for preseason and you get to see some of the players up close — until the game actually starts and you realize the result doesn’t matter, and it’s more an advertising exercise than a sporting one.
Was the traditional PGA Tour in desperate need of a shake-up, and has its power at times been used in ways that have damaged the game in other parts of the world, like Australia?
Yes, for sure. But whether LIV Golf, in its current form, is a better and more beneficial model for the wider game is very much up to personal opinion.
What happens next is anyone’s guess. There is still every chance that the OWGR waves through these changes to the MENA Tour and the LIV players are able to compete for what would likely be a very small number of ranking points.
Or they won’t, and there will be yet more rancor, more argument, more disruption.
Golf’s great shake-up continues apace.
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