LIV Golf is lastly recognised by the Official World Golf Rating — simply not in the best way the insurgent tour wished to be.
After a years lengthy battle, world rating factors can be handed out at LIV Golf tournaments, ranging from this week on the Saudi-backed league’s season-opener in Riyadh.
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However the determination by the OWGR comes with heavy caveats which have left LIV Golf simply as incredulous because it was when it had no factors.
Right here’s a full rationalization of Wednesday’s (AEDT) determination.
WHAT WAS THE OWGR DECISION?
There are two key parts to the OWGR’s determination to recognise LIV Golf occasions.
The primary is that solely the top-10 gamers at a match can be awarded world-rankings factors for his or her efficiency, which means that 47 gamers at every occasion will get nothing.
The second is that the whole quantity of factors awarded is not going to be the complete allotment seen at full-field PGA Tour occasions.
Those that do win factors solely accomplish that underneath the classification of a ‘small subject match’.
Which means the distribution of OWGR factors is closely scaled down.
’UNPRECEDENTED’ GOLF BOMBSHELL AS LIV LEFT FUMING OVER DOUBLE-EDGED RULING
In keeping with the OWGR, the winner in Riyadh this week is projected to win 23.03580 factors.
For comparability, the winner of this weekend’s Waste Administration Phoenix Open is projected to scoop 59.26054.
The principle discrepancy is that the Phoenix Open has a drastically larger ‘subject score’, which is decided by the OWGR’s ‘strokes gained world score’ of gamers.
The upper the sector score, the upper the factors projected for the winner. The strongest subject score seen in 2025 was on the US PGA Championship, wherein winner Scottie Scheffler clinched 100 OWGR factors.
Few will argue that the massive windfall for profitable a significant isn’t honest.
What is going to rankle, nonetheless, is how LIV Golf now compares to different world occasions recognised by the OWGR.
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None elevate eyebrows greater than the Hero World Problem — a glorified exhibition within the Bahamas hosted by Tiger Woods which options simply 20 top-ranked execs.
Final yr, winner Hideki Matsuyama pocketed greater than 30 factors for beating simply 19 different gamers in a match nicely outdoors the common PGA Tour season.
Even Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee, one of many staunchest critics of LIV Golf since its inception, stated the Hero getting world rating factors is “laborious to defend”.
WHY THE SHORTFALL?
It comes all the way down to the OWGR refusing to budge over key standards that LIV Golf nonetheless doesn’t meet.
This yr, LIV Golf will for the primary time stage 72-hole tournaments regardless of partly wooing gamers with its diminished 54-hole format. Not for nothing, LIV is 54 in Roman numerals.
That change alone was sufficient for the OWGR to melt its stance on LIV and supply some factors, but it surely wasn’t sufficient to win the complete bonanza.
In its assertion, the OWGR pointed to a number of roadblocks that stay.
LIV Golf fields of simply 57 gamers remains to be nicely beneath the OWGR commonplace of at the least 75.
Additionally cited was the shortage of a mid-tournament reduce.
Moreover, the OWGR flagged restrictive pathways to LIV Golf, declaring that some stars had been “self-selected” somewhat than incomes their spots within the league, whereas others have misplaced out “primarily based on their nationality somewhat than for meritocratic causes.”
For instance, Japan’s Jinichiro Kozuma was dropped for this season regardless of ending thirty second on the LIV Golf standings. Regardless of a mid-table end, he was axed to make room for Iron Heads GC to be rebranded as Korean Golf Membership, which has an all-Korean line-up.
OWGR chair Trevor Immelman stated that its determination was made with fairness in thoughts.
“We totally recognised the necessity to rank the highest males’s gamers on the planet however on the identical time needed to discover a method of doing in order that was equitable to the 1000’s of different gamers competing on different excursions that function with established meritocratic pathways,” he stated.
“We consider now we have discovered an answer that achieves these twin goals and allows the best-performing gamers at LIV Golf occasions to obtain OWGR factors.”
CAN LIV STARS PLAY THEMSELVES INTO MAJORS NOW?
Technically, sure. Although it’ll stay tough given the restricted quantity of factors on supply.
Two of the 4 majors — the Masters and Open Championship — demand a participant sit contained in the world’s top-50 to earn an exemption, in the event that they don’t qualify for some other passage.
The quantity rises barely on the US Open to the world’s top-60.
The PGA Championship doesn’t have a selected exemption that pertains to OWGR rating alone, although it’s identified to sometimes supply invitations to top-100 golfers who don’t have already got an exemption.
This implies for almost all of LIV Golf’s roster — who haven’t received a significant and can’t anticipate to routinely end contained in the top-10 — enjoying into the majors through the insurgent tour stays a pipedream.
Their greatest bets stay grinding through different routes, akin to native qualifiers or a group of Asian and/or DP World Tour occasions, relying on what main is being focused.
For main winners, the image is a bit murkier and varies relying on what main was received, and when.
Cameron Smith, for instance, can be exempt on the Open Championship yearly till he’s 60. His sole claret jug, nonetheless, solely provides him entry to the world’s different three majors by means of 2027.
Winners of the Masters and PGA Championship are exempt on the match they received for all times, whereas the US Open restricts its champions to a 10-year pardon.
HOW COULD THE RANKINGS LOOK?
All of this has been to say that enjoying into the majors will stay powerful, however not not possible, as the info exhibits.
Well-known golf stats account @Robopz crunched the numbers after the OWGR announcement to see what the rankings would appear to be had LIV been awarded factors for the previous two years (the OWGR standings function on a rolling two-year cycle).
The numbers present that 11 LIV gamers could be contained in the OWGR’s top-100; Jon Rahm (11), Bryson DeChambeau (14), Joaquin Niemann (16), Tyrrell Hatton (24), Patrick Reed (26), Carlos Ortiz (64), Laurie Canter (74), Dean Burmester (80), Sergio Garcia (88), Tom McKibbin (93) and David Puig (94).
Marc Leishman is LIV’s prime Australian at 107th, whereas Cameron Smith was adjusted to 129th, down from his precise 221st.
Whereas this presents some glimmer of hope to LIV stars trying to stand up the rankings, it exhibits that the feats to get contained in the top-50 should be some degree of extraordinary.
Rahm is proof of what can occur with constantly nice efficiency. Remarkably, he has solely ever completed outdoors the top-10 as soon as in two seasons on LIV Golf, coming T11 in Dallas in June, whereas he’s received two occasions, each in 2024.
DeChambeau’s elevated rating is basically because of his efficiency on the majors, profitable the 2024 US Open, whereas notching two runner-up finishes and three different top-10s prior to now two years. He additionally received LIV Korea final yr.
In the meantime, Niemann was arguably LIV Golf’s greatest participant in 2025, profitable in Adelaide, Singapore, Mexico Metropolis, Virginia and the UK.
The one different gamers elevated to contained in the OWGR’s top-50 are Hatton and Reed, who’re notably much more energetic on the DP World Tour than most of their LIV Golf colleagues.
WHAT NEXT?
Extra unrest, and extra uncertainty.
LIV Golf’s strongly-worded assertion made it clear that it’s unhappy with the choice and can proceed to push for “a clear, credible, and correct rating primarily based on the relative performances of gamers collaborating in male Eligible Golf Excursions worldwide.”
“Limiting factors to solely the highest 10 finishers disproportionately harms gamers who constantly carry out at a excessive degree however end simply outdoors that threshold, in addition to rising expertise working to determine themselves on the world stage—exactly the gamers a good and meritocratic rating system is designed to recognise,” LIV Golf stated in a press release.
“No different aggressive tour or league in OWGR historical past has been subjected to such a restriction. We anticipate that is merely a primary step towards a construction that totally and pretty serves the gamers, the followers, and the way forward for the game.”
Even stronger was the abstract of an nameless LIV insider, who instructed Telegraph Sport: “This can be a ludicrous cop-out”.
The failure to achieve full recognition by the OWGR withholds the potential to additional destabilise a enjoying group that’s already on shaky floor.
This yr, Brooks Koepka and Reed left LIV Golf and can each be PGA Tour gamers once more by the season’s finish. Koepka has already returned whereas Reed can be a DP World Tour common till one yr since his final LIV Golf occasion elapses.
In the meantime, intrigue continues to swirl round DeChambeau, who’s getting into the ultimate yr of his LIV Golf contract and is alleged to be leveraging these departures in asking for a reported determine of $500m (A$712m).
DeChambeau has already been rocking the boat by this week overtly declaring that he, and different gamers, “didn’t enroll” to play 72-hole occasions.
These phrases convey again recollections of a parting shot by one-time prodigy Eugenio Chacarra, who slammed LIV Golf on his departure in early 2025, saying that guarantees had been damaged.
“After I joined LIV, they promised OWGR and majors. Nevertheless it didn’t occur. I trusted them,” he stated.
“I used to be the primary younger man, then the others got here after I made the choice. However OWGR and majors nonetheless hasn’t occurred.”
Even with Wednesday’s announcement, little has modified, serving solely to cloud the way forward for the breakaway league additional.