WWhen the official World Golf Rankings finally opened the door for LIV Golf last week, they didn’t exactly throw a party in Saudi Arabia to celebrate the news. There was a clear response of “yes…but” from LIV circles as they kicked off the breakaway’s fifth season in Riyadh.
“We acknowledge this long-awaited moment of recognition…” read the opening line of LIV’s response statement to the decision that the OWGR would award world ranking points to the top-10 individual finishers each week.
“However, this outcome is unprecedented. … No other competitive tour or league in the history of the OWGR has been subject to such a restriction.”
That’s true, but it’s also true that no other tour in the history of golf is quite like LIV. OWGR president Trevor Immelman has come up with a Solomonic solution to get his board and the system to recognize a league that has merit, even if it is not a full-fledged meritocracy the way golf tours around the world have always operated.
Suddenly, Elvis is heading to Australia this week for the popular LIV Golf Adelaide event, knowing that another big finish in front of a raucous home crowd could put him on the brink of the top 50 and a potential shot at qualifying for the Masters in April.
Perhaps after the final rankings are released following LIV’s inaugural counting event, the league will change its tune and better appreciate the value of the gift it received from the OWGR and what it can mean for the league’s hungriest young players.
Elvis Smylie, the undisputedly talented 23-year-old Australian southpaw, shone under the lights in Riyadh in his LIV debut with a one-shot victory over heavyweight Jon Rahm. That victory gave Smylie about 23 points in the world rankings – not nearly the 58 Chris Gotterup received for winning the PGA Tour’s WM Phoenix Open, but more than the 20.1 points former LIV star Patrick Reed received for winning the DP World Tour’s Qatar Masters.
With that relatively modest loot, Smylie rose from 134th place in the world rankings to number 77. That is not unimportant.
Suddenly, Elvis is heading to Australia this week for the popular LIV Golf Adelaide event, knowing that another big finish in front of a raucous home crowd could put him on the brink of the top 50 and a potential shot at qualifying for the Masters in April.
“I have goals I want to achieve from a ranking standpoint, and I continue to progress in the direction I want and play my way to the majors, something I’m very passionate about,” Smylie said Tuesday in Australia.
Rahm also did well, collecting 13.3 points for another second-place finish, moving him from a severely underrated No. 97 to 67th and on his way to where he belongs. Since Rahm never finished outside the top 10 in 13 LIV starts last season (including four second-place finishes), simulations show that he would now likely be in the top 10 of the OWGR if LIV had achieved the same points over the past two seasons.
Peter Uihlein, who rose from 199th to 154th in the world rankings by finishing third in Riyadh, seemed to understand better than anyone at LIV how valuable gaining OWGR points is to the competition.
“Maybe I’m one of the few who likes it,” Uihlein said. “We have more points in the world rankings today than we did yesterday. I saw that the winner gets 23 points (in Riyadh). In Qatar he gets 20. In my eyes, we are the second best tour in the world right now. Obviously there are things that probably need to be worked out with the top 10 or whatever, but the reality is that we have more points today than we did yesterday. I’m all for it.”
That’s the kind of attitude that should encourage the young players. LIV has been working more and more over the past two seasons. Finishing top 10 in an LIV event now means something, and stringing enough of those together could lead to opportunities to play in majors.
“It’s fantastic that we’re getting points. It’s fantastic that we’re being recognized in some way. That said, I don’t like that we’re not being treated the same as any other tour.” – Jon Rahm
That’s a real carrot for players like Smylie, Joaquin Niemann, Tom McKibbin, David Puig, Michael La Sasso, Caleb Surratt and Josele Ballester. This is a chance to really stand out and prove their merit in a competition that now means something more than just money.
“Yes, it’s definitely a step in the right direction,” Smylie said. “I think there’s still more work to be done, but I think everyone here at LIV has done a really good job of giving us players the opportunity to be able to take advantage of ranking points, which will help us get into the Majors, which is incredibly important, especially to me. But it’s great that we can now do that on a platform like LIV.”
Cam Smith, Smylie’s 2022 Open and Players champion: “I really think he can be the best golfer in the world. He has all the tools of the trade. He just has to keep doing what he’s doing and keep his spirits up. … He has to decide where he’s going to go, and I think it can only go one way, and that’s better.”
OWGR will help define that, even if catching No. 1 Scottie Scheffler may be out of reach for those not playing on the PGA Tour unless they win multiple majors. Rahm, who previously ascended to world No. 1, understands the value of being part of the system, even if he wishes it was more.
“It’s fantastic that we get points. It’s fantastic that we are recognized in some way,” Rahm said in Riyadh. “Having said that, I don’t like that we’re not being treated the same as any other tour. It seems like the rules that are in place don’t really apply to us as only ten of us are getting just points. It doesn’t seem fair. The small fields that are there during the year, their players are getting full points.”
“There is work to be done. While it is good for some people, it may result in some players actually losing points in the world rankings rather than gaining them, because finishing 11th is effectively a missed opportunity, and we are already adding to the divisor.”
That’s certainly a problem, as Talor Gooch got nothing for finishing a stroke behind those ranked ninth last week and fell 11 places further into irrelevance at 1,579th in the world. But the old adage of “playing better” applies, and a big season at LIV could make Gooch respectable again.
Of course, there are good reasons why the OWGR doesn’t treat LIV the same as any other tour, and it took a lot of effort to explain all of that very clearly when it announced the limited inclusion of LIV. It classifies LIV golf events as ‘small field tournaments’, applying a cutoff for the distribution of ranking points.
“The board’s main objective was to find a fair way to rank the best men’s players in the world, including the top performers in LIV Golf, taking into account the eligibility standards that LIV Golf does not currently meet and the fact that it operates differently from other ranked tours in a number of respects.”
Those differences are substantial. LIV’s average field size of 57 is lower than the minimum of 75 (average) as set out in the OWGR regulations. It only organizes no-cut events. The limited opportunities to participate (only five seats filled during the Asian Tour’s International Series and a closed promotional event) do not compensate for the attrition of underperforming players. And perhaps most importantly, the recruitment and self-selection of contracted players violates golf’s qualifying standards on all other tours.
LIV should be very grateful that it got what it got. And it can improve that by extending real relegation and qualification pathways to its league.
“We fully recognized the need to rank the best men’s players in the world, but at the same time had to find a way to do so that was fair to the thousands of other players competing on other tours that operate under established meritocratic pathways,” said Immelman, the 2008 Masters champion and CBS golf analyst who took over the reins of the OWGR from Peter Dawson last year.
“We believe we have found a solution that achieves these dual objectives and allows the top performers at LIV Golf events to receive OWGR points.”
LIV should be very grateful that it got what it got. And it can improve that by extending real relegation and qualification pathways to its league. It has known this since its first request for ranking points was rejected and Dawson thoughtfully explained that “to achieve inclusion in the OWGR system, it is imperative that you develop a structure that invites new players based on objective, recent performance and relegates underperforming players more quickly and fairly.”
LIV expanded its “relegation zone” from six players to 11 in 2026, meaning those who finish from 47th to 57th in the individual rankings will be dropped from the competition in 2027 and will have to earn their way back through the promotional event or the International Series standings. Whether it creates 11 qualifying pathways next year to fill those spots remains to be seen, but it will have to do better to convince the OWGR to expand its offerings.
Like Dawson before him, Immelman made it clear that LIV will have to do more to be treated equally with other tours.
“When you look at the OWGR and how it’s put together with over 25 eligible tours around the world, thousands of golfers ranked around the world, it’s about meritocracy,” Immelman said at the PNC Championship in December. “That’s one of the beauties of our sport and the beauty of the professional game is that you earn your way onto a tour and fight to keep your job on that tour. So it’s been more along those lines of working with them to understand their league from that point of view: meritocracy, promotion and relegation and the self-selection aspect of how their league is constructed.”
It will never be the equal of the PGA Tour, but if LIV capitalizes on its OWGR opportunities, it could actually become a viable and sustainable global rival.
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