Even with four successfully completed events, the inclusion of LIV Golf in the official world golf ranking process remains uncertain.
LIV Golf is a professional golf tour operating as a rival to the PGA tour. Due to the appeal of its huge prize pool of 25 million USD per tournament, LIV has caused a lot of defections in the PGA, including the likes of the current Open Championship winner, Cameron Smith. However, even with such a prize pool, the controversial event is yet to be included in the official world golf ranking process.
This uncertainty regarding inclusion is not taken well by the LIV players. Reports suggest that the golfers are unhappy with the delay in recognition by the OWGR. “To have 48 of the best guys around the world playing and not to get world ranking points, I think is perhaps a little bit unfair,” stated Cameron Smith, the world no. 2.
The president of LIV Golf, Atul Khosla, shared the same concerns as the players. According to Khosla, the board members of OWGR are conflicted on the issue. “I’m hoping eventually cooler heads will prevail because it makes the best sense for the fans who just want to see the best guys compete,” Khosla said. “You can’t tell me that just because Cam is playing here today, that he’s not the second-best golfer. It doesn’t make any sense,” he added.
There are still no official comments from the OWGR regarding the issue. OWGR is an entity governed by seven board of directors in charge of ranking golfers according to their performance. For now, it seems we will have to wait to find out whether or not they decide to recognize LIV’s application to get included in the ranking process.
