World ranking points will be a boon to LIV players
When the Official World Golf Ranking finally opened the door a crack to LIV Golf last week, they didn’t exactly throw a party in Saudi Arabia to celebrate the news. There was a clear reaction of “yeah … but” coming from LIV circles as they kicked off the breakaway league’s fifth season in Riyadh.
“We acknowledge this long-overdue moment of recognition …” read the opening line of LIV’s response statement to the decision that the OWGR would give world ranking points to the top-10 individual finishers each week.
“However, this outcome is unprecedented. … No other competitive tour or league in OWGR history has been subjected to such a restriction.”
That’s true enough, but it’s also true that no other tour in the history of golf is quite like LIV. OWGR chairman Trevor Immelman brokered a Solomonic solution for getting his board and the system to recognize a league that has merit even if it’s not a full-fledged meritocracy in the way that golf tours around the world have always operated.
Perhaps after the latest rankings came out following LIV’s inaugural counting event, the league might change its tune and come to better appreciate the value of the gift it received from the OWGR and what it can mean to the league’s hungriest young players.
Elvis Smylie, the unquestionably talented 23-year-old Australian left-hander, shone in his LIV debut under the lights in Riyadh with a one-shot victory over league heavyweight Jon Rahm. That win earned Smylie roughly 23 world-ranking points – not nearly the 58 that Chris Gotterup received for winning the PGA Tour’s WM Phoenix Open but more than the 20.1 points former LIV star Patrick Reed got for winning the DP World Tour’s Qatar Masters.
With that relatively modest haul, Smylie climbed from 134th in the world to No. 77. That is not insignificant.
