One of many major acknowledged goals of Greg Norman’s breakaway LIV Golf enterprise was to shake up the world of the skilled sport. To that finish, he’s most actually succeeding.
For months now skilled golf has discovered itself in an ever-deepening pit of chaos, stumbling between authorized battles and injunctions and the advantageous print of anti-trust regulation.
So tedious have these round arguments turn out to be that the start line of the Nice LIV Debate — issues about sportswashing from the Saudi Arabian authorities, who’re bankrolling the league to the tune of many tons of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} — is now virtually fully ignored.
Essentially the most present hoopla surrounds Official World Golf Rating (OWGR) factors, the system that successfully judges which gamers are the most effective on this planet in comparison with their friends. Amongst different issues, this method is used to assist in qualification for some main tournaments.
The LIV occasions, the sixth of which is to be held in Thailand this week, don’t at the moment qualify for OWGR factors. This can be a main level of competition for everybody concerned in LIV Golf.
Gamers like our personal Cameron Smith have publicly questioned why he’s not eligible for rating factors, having foregone the PGA Tour to signal with LIV for someplace round $140 million.
Norman has despatched many sternly worded press releases, together with one open letter co-signed by LIV gamers successfully saying their exclusion “undermines the historic worth of OWGR”.
So why cannot LIV Golf, which boasts 4 former world quantity ones, a lot of main winners and our personal Smith, the reigning Open champion, qualify for rating factors?
Just because LIV occasions do not match the OWGR’s clearly-stated standards.
The OWGR requires occasions to comprise of 72 holes, which LIV doesn’t. They require occasions to have a reduce, which LIV doesn’t.
They require a transparent technique of qualification for occasions, so anybody inside skilled golf’s wider ecosystem may theoretically compete, which LIV doesn’t have. They require the tour to have been operational for a full yr earlier than contemplating an utility — which typically then takes one other full yr — which LIV has not.
All of which opens up two potential paths for LIV to go down. They’ll tweak their format and keep affected person, secure within the data that the day will come that they’ll totally qualify and be un-ignorable as a sanctioned tour beneath OWGR guidelines.
Or they might go searching for loopholes.
This week, information emerged that LIV had shaped a “strategic alliance” with the Center East and North Africa Tour, a largely developmental tour that hasn’t hosted an occasion since pre-COVID. The plan was by getting the MENA Tour — which is eligible for OWGR factors — to take in the LIV occasions, they’d by default be eligible for factors as quickly as this week.
However whereas these within the LIV ecosystem celebrated their genius gambit, OWGR put out an announcement placing the brakes on issues, saying they would wish to overview these late modifications and wouldn’t be awarding any factors till the overview was full.
One other level of competition. One other potential lawsuit within the making. But extra disruption for disruption’s sake, as these with flags caught in both facet of the controversy stick rigidly to their arguments.
As with virtually something in life, there may be a couple of means to have a look at all this. It is by no means fully black and white.
Does it suck that Cameron Smith, by any metric one of many best golfers on this planet, goes to slide down the rankings as a result of his tournaments aren’t recognised?
After all, however he and all the opposite LIV gamers (hopefully) knew precisely what they had been signing up for, and certainly understood that these buckets of money had been going to hold with them some form of catch.
Would it’s cool to see Smith, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka enjoying a LIV occasion someplace in Australia subsequent yr?
Kinda, yeah. In the identical means that it is thrilling when Manchester United come to city for preseason and also you get to see among the gamers up shut — till the sport truly begins and also you realise the consequence does not matter, and it is extra an promoting train than a sporting one.
Was the standard PGA Tour in determined want of a shake-up, and has its energy at occasions been utilized in ways in which has broken the sport in different components of the world, like Australia?
Sure, for certain. However whether or not LIV Golf, in its present type, is a greater and extra useful mannequin for the broader sport could be very a lot as much as private opinion.
What occurs subsequent is anybody’s guess. There may be nonetheless each probability that the OWGR waves by these modifications to the MENA Tour and the LIV gamers are capable of compete for what would possible be a really small variety of rating factors.
Or they will not, and there can be but extra rancour, extra argument, extra disruption.
Golf’s nice shake-up continues apace.
