LIV Golf chief executive Greg Norman has lambasted the Official World Golf Rankings with a post on social media.
The Australian leader of the rebel golf tour described the OWGR as “laughable” when posting a graphic showing the lack of LIV players in the ranking’s top 50.
“Laughable. LIV would have 2 players in the top 50 OWGR if you exclude recent signees!” Norman wrote in a post that went on X (Twitter) and Instagram.
Currently, the Saudi-funded league has five players in the top 50, but this number would only be two had it not recruited Jon Rahm, Tyrrell Hatton and Adrian Meronk at the start of 2024.
Figures from LIV have never been shy to express their gripes with the OWGR board which rejected LIV’s bid for world ranking legitimacy back in October.
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Former Open champion Cameron Smith described the rankings as “almost obsolete” and “pretty ridiculous” shortly after the tour was rejected, while Joaquin Niemann recently called them “unfair.”
Smith and Brooks Koepka are the other two players who joined LIV prior to this season, its third season of existence, but their rankings have begun to tumble.
Despite both players winning major championships in the last two years, their ranking will continue to fall as they have signed up to a league that doesn’t qualify for OWGR points.
Why are there no LIV Golf world ranking points?
Peter Dawson, the chairman of the OWGR, confirmed to AP that the playing format in the LIV Golf League couldn’t be “ranked equitably” with other tours towards the end of last year.
“We are not at war with them,” he said “This decision not to make them eligible is not political. It is entirely technical.
“LIV players are self-evidently good enough to be ranked. They’re just not playing in a format where they can be ranked equitably with the other 24 tours and thousands of players trying to compete on them”.
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One of the key reasons in the OWGR’s decision was LIV’s “mostly-closed style fashion.”
Almost every player in the 54-man LIV roster has been lured by an attractive cash offer and not via a formal qualifying system.
At the end of 2023, the league held a Q-school-type event that saw three players earn spots for 2024 through their merit however, the OWGR ruled that “the current structure is not consistent with underlying principles of fairness and meritocracy on which the OWGR system is based.”
Another sticking point was the team format running parallel to the individual format at each of LIV’s tournaments.
The board were “concerned about the implications of conducting individual and team competitions simultaneously.”
This issue cited a case study of Sebastian Munoz at the LIV Golf Orlando event last April when the Colombian admitted to lagging a putt from 40 feet away when contending to win the tournament in an effort not to jeopardise his team’s chances of winning the team format that week.
“I knew we were one stroke ahead on the team, so I couldn’t go extra. I knew I couldn’t be too aggressive.”
NOW READ: The OWGR’s full rejection letter to LIV Golf
NOW READ: How far have LIV Golf players plummeted down the world rankings?
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