LIV Golf

[Mel Smooth]

LIV have withdrawn their application for OWGR points - rightly so - it's a system that is corrupt, and no longer works in the aims it set out to do.

LIV Golf Gives Up Quest for Official World Golf Ranking Accreditation

The Saudi-backed league told players about the decision in a letter saying “OWGR has shown little willingness to productively work with us.”

www.si.com

 

[Deleted member 15344]

LIV have withdrawn their application for OWGR points - rightly so - it's a system that is corrupt, and no longer works in the aims it set out to do.

LIV Golf Gives Up Quest for Official World Golf Ranking Accreditation

The Saudi-backed league told players about the decision in a letter saying “OWGR has shown little willingness to productively work with us.”

www.si.com

It’s a system that works well for the majors

It’s not “corrupt” - it does what it says on the tin and every other tour has no issues following the guidelines

Im guessing that means now all the players and LIVers will stop moaning about them

It’s good to see them standing up to LIV and not bending the rules to suit them

 

[Dando]

LIV have withdrawn their application for OWGR points - rightly so - it's a system that is corrupt, and no longer works in the aims it set out to do.

LIV Golf Gives Up Quest for Official World Golf Ranking Accreditation

The Saudi-backed league told players about the decision in a letter saying “OWGR has shown little willingness to productively work with us.”

www.si.com

 

[Fore Right]

Heard this on the Golf Channel podcast.
Liv getting OWGR points doesnt matter anymore because the players have fallen so far they wouldnt ever be able to return no matter how well they played so its pointless getting it.

Liv are now looking to engage directly with the majors for a qualifying criteria through the Liv Golf Order Of Merit.

 

[Deleted member 15344]

Heard this on the Golf Channel podcast.
Liv getting OWGR points doesnt matter anymore because the players have fallen so far they wouldnt ever be able to return no matter how well they played so its pointless getting it.

Liv are now looking to engage directly with the majors for a qualifying criteria through the Liv Golf Order Of Merit.

Is that the same majors that are on the OWGR panel the same panel that’s already turned them down

Two of the majors are Opens so there will be routes into them that any LIV player can take

The other two will the special invite card that they can use to reward any player that is showing willingness to qualify

I will be surprised if they allow direct entry from the LIV OOM -the best players are already in the majors and you expect those to be around the top of the OOM

 

[Mel Smooth]

Personally I would anticipate that LIV will start pushing the TUGR rankings, and I wouldn't be surprised to see The Asian Tour also start to adopt them - we'll see.

What it does perhaps show is that there is no resolution on the merger front and we'll see the PIF doubling down further in the coming months.

 

[Deleted member 15344]

Personally I would anticipate that LIV will start pushing the TUGR rankings, and I wouldn't be surprised to see The Asian Tour also start to adopt them - we'll see.

What it does perhaps show is that there is no resolution on the merger front and we'll see the PIF doubling down further in the coming months.

LIV can use whatever rankings they want - the main use of the rankings is for entry into majors and other main comps . They use the OWGR , why would the Asian Tour move away from them ? For what purpose

All the other rankings are meaningless at the end of the day

 

[LincolnShep]

LIV can use whatever rankings they want - the main use of the rankings is for entry into majors and other main comps . They use the OWGR , why would the Asian Tour move away from them ? For what purpose

All the other rankings are meaningless at the end of the day

You appear to think that the majors will be content that they no longer have a comprehensive tool to use in their qualifying criteria. If you were organising a major, wouldn't you want one ranking system that covered everyone? They use OWGR because, pre-LIV, it used to rank everyone; but now it doesn't. If I were organising a tournament, I'd be frustrated by that omission. I'd want the best players in my tournament, and I want a way of knowing who the best players are.

 

[Mel Smooth]

You appear to think that the majors will be content that they no longer have a comprehensive tool to use in their qualifying criteria. If you were organising a major, wouldn't you want one ranking system that covered everyone? They use OWGR because, pre-LIV, it used to rank everyone; but now it doesn't. If I were organising a tournament, I'd be frustrated by that omission. I'd want the best players in my tournament, and I want a way of knowing who the best players are.

The Majors all sit on the OWGR board of course, so they may have actively sought to deny a fair ranking system as a means of access to their events.

You would think they'd all want the best players possible in their events, but I suspect the existing relationships between the OWGR board members has been used in the PGAT's favour on this issue. Sadly, that's gonna be to the detriment of the majors in the short term.

 

[Deleted member 15344]

You appear to think that the majors will be content that they no longer have a comprehensive tool to use in their qualifying criteria. If you were organising a major, wouldn't you want one ranking system that covered everyone? They use OWGR because, pre-LIV, it used to rank everyone; but now it doesn't. If I were organising a tournament, I'd be frustrated by that omission. I'd want the best players in my tournament, and I want a way of knowing who the best players are.

As it says in the article the majors have 4 spots on the board for the OWGR - if they were that concerned about LIV players then they just award them points

The majors will have the best players on them - no one is missing out due to most of the best players having exemptions, and if there is the odd player like Niemann there will be a way to qualify

There are also events the LIV players can play in to gain entry into the majors

 

[Imurg]

OWGR will be frustrated.....it would surprise me if they didn't want to rank LIV
But LIV doesn't comply with OWGR criteria for ranking every other Professional tour..
LIV were told what they needed to do to gain ranking points...it's not like they said Sod off we don't like you and you're destroying golf....
But LIV either can't or won't make the necessary changes to comply.....is that OWGR fault?
Where is the compromise from LIV?
Why does LIV expect OWGR to change their criteria to comply with them.?
OWGR has a duty to the rest of the tours - they don't all operate in the same way so there must be a way that LIV could work with them...
But they won't.....
If it means slightly weaker fields in the Majors for a while then so be it.....

 

[Backsticks]

Eddie Pep wrote a prettt fair piece on the state of golf. Like him or not, he makes a few good points.

“Once the Q&A was opened up to the audience last night, to nobody's surprise it wasn't long before the question of LIV and the future of professional golf came up. Some thoughts...

I said as much at the dinner and I'll write it here too; I have no real idea where professional golf is heading, but I do know what I hope for. I hope professional golf ends up at a place where it really should have started a few years ago with the emergence of LIV, and that looks something more akin to cricket with the IPL. I hope we find a way for LIV to reduce its schedule and it fit within a window, or two, where it has the opportunity to thrive. I would argue that strategically this has in fact been LIV's major error, in that by going too big too soon, it missed an opportunity to garner a critical mass of support, principally via the leading players, where they could have become invested in the idea, seen it as a replacement of the lucrative World Golf Championships and seen the broader potential to expand globally. The brands, sponsors etc already existing within the sport would have likely followed, and LIV would have had the chance to grow and become more visible, and potentially more valuable in the way the IPL has in cricket. I occasionally wonder if it is indeed why Yasir Al-Rumayyan's heavy involvement has been a hindrance. The deal that has just been done with the ATP Tour and PIF seems to me to be a more sensible one, whereas the LIV project at times feels like a pet project (speculative) of Yasir's, furthered by the vengeance of Greg Norman, of course (less speculative).

I watched an interesting video on "Trophy Assets" this week. I wanted to understand a bit more on what constitutes one and how they are valued. It turns out, as you probably suspect, that they are often emotional purchases, and the price that is paid has very little to do with financial returns. Drawing the relationship between the price and value isn't performed in the same way it would traditionally be done when considering another business venture. Take the NFL, the prices paid for this group of assets has grown substantially over the last decade, from around a multiple of four times revenues to seven times revenues. The NFL operates on average with a healthy operating margin and revenues continue to grow. That operating margin varies tremendously between different sports, with the average Premier League teams OM sitting around 8% (as per the research by Aswath Damodaran - 2012-2022). I mention these because even in spite of the economics behind the investments, whether good or bad, to the owners of franchises within these leagues it doesn't matter a great deal, all that matters is they own the Trophy Asset. Now think about LIV golf. What do they (PIF of Saudi Arabia) own? As far as I can tell they don't own much, if anything. If they think LIV golf is itself a Trophy Asset, I have something to sell them, and if they think LIV golf can become one anytime soon in its current form, then good luck with that too. All they 'own' is a player, for a set period of time, and even that has the potential to be watered down should the PGA Tour find a way of affording them the occasional appearance. This is something I cannot quite wrap my head around, that after spending billions of dollars they have no lasting stake in a valuable entity, and what they do have ownership in isn't lasting and is falling in value due to a lack of prominence and visibility.

The SSG group, who have just invested into the PGA Tour Enterprises, now have an ownership stake in a Trophy Asset. Whether you, I, or Flushing It like it or not, the PGA Tour has history, prestige, inherent value, and therefore constitutes what could rightly be referred to as a Trophy Asset. An asset which incidentally makes money, which is more than can be said of many Premier League football clubs.

Maybe I'm just being a contrarian for the sake of it, or maybe I'm not, but I would posit that history shows us that the most likely outcome in all of this is that the PGA Tour survives and LIV golf doesn't, unless it undergoes significant changes and seeks to fit in more cooperatively. The perception out there, I think largely fuelled by the strident pro-LIV accounts that exist on X, is that LIV is winning, or that LIV will win this war. We should be cognis(z)ant of who we listen to and the messaging we see. One thing I would ask all fellow professional golfers to realise and understand is that the money coming into the game right now won't last forever. The money being funnelled into LIV golf also won't last forever. Nothing lasts forever on that front. What does persist through time however, particularly as it relates to sport, are the foundational principles of open and fair competition, meritocracy, respect and passion. We should be asking ourselves what is sustainable at times like this, not what can we take for ourselves, and use history as our guide to understand what the most likely outcome will be. It will provide a sense of calm in these uncertain times, and help us decipher whether we are likely living with a lasting reality, or not.“

Its a thoughtful and well articulated piece. And has to be taken as on sounder basis than any strident pro-LIV accounts. The givaway that torpedos their credibility is when their pro LIV-ness is coupled with anti PGAT, anti Monahan, and generally knocking and deriding anything PGAT. Showing they are in no way independent, impartial, and even not truly rationally pro LIV at all.

 

[Fore Right]

Right Now The Majors know they dont need to do anything because all the Liv players they want to be in their events are already in them.
The one person who wasnt got a special invite.
Next year when DJ becomes the best player on Liv not to qualify through OWGR, he will get a special invite as well.

The Majors will do whatever they need to do to make sure their events have the best players in the world.

 

[Swango1980]

LIV have withdrawn their application for OWGR points - rightly so - it's a system that is corrupt, and no longer works in the aims it set out to do.

LIV Golf Gives Up Quest for Official World Golf Ranking Accreditation

The Saudi-backed league told players about the decision in a letter saying “OWGR has shown little willingness to productively work with us.”

www.si.com

All this hot air demanding OWGR points, and when LIV withdraw their application, it is seen as the right thing.

I suspect that is at least over 100 pages of comments on this thread that are now meaningless

 

[Deleted member 15344]

Right Now The Majors know they dont need to do anything because all the Liv players they want to be in their events are already in them.
The one person who wasnt got a special invite.
Next year when DJ becomes the best player on Liv not to qualify through OWGR, he will get a special invite as well.

The Majors will do whatever they need to do to make sure their events have the best players in the world.

DJ will be able to enter a number of majors for a long time yet , as will plenty of others

if the majors were that bothered then they would have done something when it comes to the points issue

 

[Captainron]

The Majors have their entry criteria. They will fill their fields without any issue. The LIV defectees are the ones clamouring for the opportunity to play them.

 

[Imurg]

The Majors have their entry criteria. They will fill their fields without any issue. The LIV defectees are the ones clamouring for the opportunity to play them.

And some then not bothering to try and qualify...

 

[Fore Right]

It will all work itself out in time #Nodrama

 

[LincolnShep]

OWGR will be frustrated.....it would surprise me if they didn't want to rank LIV
But LIV doesn't comply with OWGR criteria for ranking every other Professional tour..
LIV were told what they needed to do to gain ranking points...it's not like they said Sod off we don't like you and you're destroying golf....
But LIV either can't or won't make the necessary changes to comply.....is that OWGR fault?
Where is the compromise from LIV?
Why does LIV expect OWGR to change their criteria to comply with them.?
OWGR has a duty to the rest of the tours - they don't all operate in the same way so there must be a way that LIV could work with them...
But they won't.....
If it means slightly weaker fields in the Majors for a while then so be it.....

Why should you care where the compromise comes from?
Why should the majors care where the compromise comes from?
We used to have world golf rankings - now we don't. I find that regrettable.
If OWGR don't want to rank LIV golfers, that is entirely their choice, they are not obliged to bend - but it means their name is no longer accurate. They don't rank golf, they just rank a particular format of golf.
As LIV are no longer looking for OWGR ranking points, it may be because PIF will be (or already are) funding a rival ranking system. A comprehensive ranking system.

 

[Deleted member 15344]

Why should you care where the compromise comes from?
Why should the majors care where the compromise comes from?
We used to have world golf rankings - now we don't. I find that regrettable.
If OWGR don't want to rank LIV golfers, that is entirely their choice, they are not obliged to bend - but it means their name is no longer accurate. They don't rank golf, they just rank a particular format of golf.
As LIV are no longer looking for OWGR ranking points, it may be because PIF will be (or already are) funding a rival ranking system. A comprehensive ranking system.

But whats the purpose of any other ranking system ? Its main aim is entry in the majors , they why they were started in the first place. It’s all about being in the top 50 etc to gain entry into the biggest comps

There are multiple other systems using many different algorithms- but all irrelevant at the end of the day

The OWGR suits every single other tour , it suits the majors , it suits all the other tours when looking at entry criteria into tournaments

It’s accurate enough for them based on this