Maybe LIV Golf officials really believed the 48 players in the tour’s Thailand event this week would begin earning world-ranking points immediately through the group’s new strategic alliance with the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) Tour, announced as if it were a game-changing breakthrough earlier this week.
Or perhaps LIV Golf was trying to wish it into existence.
It may happen – those precious OWGR points being awarded in LIV Golf’s 54-hole, no-cut events – but it’s not happening this week nor next when the tour heads to Jeddah for its penultimate event in 2022.
Whether LIV Golf has found a backdoor channel to qualify for points – aligning itself with a developmental tour that went more than two years without playing an event – remains to be seen. Or maybe it’s trying to sneak in using a fake ID.
For the moment, though, the OWGR has effectively said stop, do not pass go, do not collect world-ranking points.
In a statement released Thursday, the OWGR said it is conducting a review of the changes made by the MENA Tour while making it clear such potential change doesn’t happen almost literally overnight.
The OWGR statement read, in part:
“Notice of these changes given by the MENA Tour is insufficient to allow OWGR to conduct the customary necessary review ahead of the LIV Golf Invitational Bangkok (7-9 October) and LIV Golf Invitational Jeddah (14-16 October).
“Only after the review is complete will a decision be made awarding points to the MENA Tour’s new ‘Limited Field Tournaments’ defined by the MENA Tour in its Regulations as “any MENA Tour-approved tournament, which comprises of a player field of less than 80 players.”
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