The Saudi-backed LIV Golf League has withdrawn its utility for Official World Golf Rating (OWGR) factors, in line with a number of US stories on Tuesday.
Sports activities Illustrated, ESPN and The Golf Channel reported LIV Golf commissioner Greg Norman informed gamers in a letter on Tuesday the trouble for recognition that started in July 2022 has ended.
“It’s now clear that one of the simplest ways ahead for LIV as a league and also you as LIV golfers is just not by means of the present rating system,” Norman stated.
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“A decision which protects the accuracy, credibility and integrity of the OWGR rankings not exists.”
The OWGR, whose factors system is used to resolve invites and exemptions into golf’s 4 main championships, denied LIV Golf’s bid final October, citing considerations about restricted paths to becoming a member of LIV, an absence of turnover amongst gamers and the side of simultaneous workforce and particular person competitors.
LIV made changes to create extra spots and a relegation system however, Norman wrote, “the OWGR has proven little willingness to productively work with us.”
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With LIV Golf gamers getting no factors from the circuit’s 54-hole occasions, lots of the big-names that defected from the US PGA Tour have fallen out of the highest placings.
Solely 4 LIV golfers are on this week’s world rankings prime 50, led by third-ranked Jon Rahm, the reigning Masters champion from Spain who made the swap final December.
Others embrace Britain’s Seventeenth-ranked Tyrrell Hatton, who made the leap in January; five-time main winner Brooks Koepka, an American ranked thirtieth who received final 12 months’s PGA Championship, and Fiftieth-ranked Cameron Smith of Australia, the 2022 British Open champion.
Norman stated LIV gamers have been snubbed for thus lengthy that it will be tough for them to be correctly rated even when OWGR started assigning factors now for LIV occasions.
“The rankings are structured to penalize anybody who has not performed repeatedly on an ‘Eligible Tour’ with the sphere rankings disproportionately rewarding play on the PGA Tour,” Norman stated.
“Even when LIV Golf occasions had been instantly awarded factors, the OWGR system is designed such that it will be functionally inconceivable so that you can regain positions near the summit of the rating, the place so a lot of you belong,” he added.
LIV and PGA Tour gamers can compete in opposition to one another at majors, with many LIV gamers having earned their means into the fields at golf’s 4 prime occasions based mostly on achievements earlier than LIV started in 2022.
However retaining these spots or incomes them are more durable with out rating factors. A notable exception to the rule this 12 months is Chile’s Joaquin Niemann, who received final 12 months’s Australian Open to earn a spot on this 12 months’s British Open and he was given a particular invitation into subsequent month’s Masters.
Niemann, who received his second LIV title of the season final weekend at Jeddah, stated on Monday he additionally has acquired a particular invitation to play in Could’s PGA Championship.
The Telegraph stories that Norman is interesting to every of the 4 majors to increase their exemptions checklist to incorporate spots based mostly on the LIV Golf order of advantage.
Such an exemption would see, for instance, the highest 10 gamers on the LIV Golf rankings on a given date earn a spot within the subsequent main.
It was the majors, nevertheless, who voted down LIV Golf’s push for rankings factors within the first place, making the scenario extra dire for the breakaway league.