With the PGA Tour season in the rearview mirror and the Masters seven months away, we’ve entered a strange new phase of the 2022 golf calendar: LIV watching season.
For the next few months until a tumultuous 2022 comes to a merciful conclusion, there’ll be no escaping the specter of the Saudi-funded tour. Even if you choose not to watch the streaming of the four remaining LIV Golf Invitational events over the next seven weeks, the breakaway circuit and its cast of players will be impossible to ignore.
Most noticeably, the Presidents Cup this month will be severely impacted by LIV, with the International team forced to contend with a more heavily favored American squad without at least a handful of banished players whom captain Trevor Immelman would have been counting on only months ago. That’s a tough pill for the PGA Tour to swallow.
There are 18 LIV Golf players expected to compete in this week’s flagship event on the DP World Tour, the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, which Rory McIlroy conceded will be “hard to stomach.” It is a deeply important event for some of those LIV guys in the field trying to maintain their standing among the crucial top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking, most notably Abraham Ancer (No. 24), Kevin Na (No. 32) and Talor Gooch (No. 46). Gooch in particular is unlikely to remain in the top 50 at year’s end without picking up some much-needed points this week.
That year-end top 50 is the benchmark many will be keeping an eye on because it comes with an invitation to the 2023 Masters Tournament. Assuming Gooch does not get credited for the fact that he did meet the point standards to qualify for the Tour Championship had he not been suspended for joining LIV, that top 50 may be his last hope for returning to Augusta, where he tied for 14th this year in his Masters debut.
The Masters has not made any announcements regarding its qualifications or how it will handle LIV Golf players in April. Speculation has run rampant regarding potential bans or players who have gone to the other side being disinvited, but Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley has given no indication of what he might do.
There are 58 players who already meet the standard qualifications for getting invited to the 2023 Masters. Of those 58, 10 have signed with LIV Golf – six past champions (Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, Patrick Reed, Charl Schwartzel and Bubba Watson); three major winners in the last five years (Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and Cameron Smith); and one player who qualified and competed at East Lake (Joaquin Niemann).
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