LIV golfers are courageously forging an innovative new path for a stuffy old sport in the face of obstructionist conspiracies by golf’s corrupt deep state. Or so insists Phil Mickelson, whose prior perilous proximity to an insider trading indictment at least grants him some authority on corrupt conspiracies.
The latest supposed evidence of anti-LIV collusion is the refusal by the Official World Golf Ranking to recognize the Saudi-funded circuit, and the reaction to that rejection exposes an argument by the league and its players that is less about rewarding their enlightenment than indulging their entitlement.
The OWGR’s decision was neither surprising nor suspicious. LIV didn’t meet multiple criteria for inclusion when applied 15 months ago and has made no serious effort at compliance since. The chairman of the ranking body, Peter Dawson, said algorithmic solutions exist to questions about field size, number of rounds and the lack of a cut, but that there remain two areas of significant concern: the qualification process, and how LIV’s individual tournaments co-exist with the team component.
Entry to LIV is determined by the whim of Greg Norman and the checkbook of Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the head of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Exits from LIV are equally inequitable, with some stars contractually exempt from the consequences of poor play. “Simply put, the Board Committee does not believe it is equitable to thousands of players who strive every day to get starts in OWGR Eligible Tournaments to have a tour. operate in this mostly-closed fashion,” Dawson wrote to Norman. He further noted that LIV teammates are often grouped together and cited comments by Sebastian Munoz, who in April admitted that he was less concerned with tying Brooks Koepka on the final hole of an individual tournament than in protecting a narrow lead in the team event.
As Dawson signposted the fast track to compliance, LIV’s reply showed it wants a spot on the podium without having to run the race.
“OWGR’s sole objective is to rank the best players across the globe. Today’s communication makes clear that it can no longer deliver on that objective,” LIV announced, with characteristic dissembling. The objective of the OWGR is to rank players competing on tours whose competitive integrity can be vouched for, which LIV’s cannot. By LIV’s logic, Dustin Johnson deserves ranking points simply because he’s Dustin Johnson, regardless of whether he is competing in the Masters or in a member-guest.
Warming to the goal of gaslighting, LIV’s statement continued: “A ranking which fails to fairly represent all participants, irrespective of where in the world they play golf, robs fans, players and all of golf’s stakeholders of the objective basis underpinning any accurate recognition of the world’s best player performances. It also robs some traditional tournaments of the best fields possible.”
This week alone, the OWGR will rank competitors in the United States, Spain, Macau, Japan, South Korea, Australia, China, South Africa, Sweden and Indonesia. It meets any reasonable standard for “irrespective of where in the world,” even as it excludes Saudi Arabia. This isn’t a dispute about individuals or geography but about format. It’s not who or where, but how. As for robbing events of the best fields, the majors have always been free to adjust exemption criteria to accommodate LIV players, though none is likely to embrace Bryson DeChambeau’s fatuous idea of automatically exempting the league’s top twelve members — 25% of the entire roster.
After the OWGR announcement, Phredo Mickelson swung by social media to peddle conspiracy theories so specious that one loses IQ points just by reading them, all while conveniently ignoring the problematic structure of LIV. “This is move six in a long game of chess,” he posted. “You won’t believe moves 32-37. That’s when it gets REALLY good.”
Leaving aside the smug gibberish you’d expect from the smartest guy ever to be bailed out by butchers, it’s unsurprising that he clings to some mysterious master plan that we’re all too dumb to grasp. The bill of goods that Norman sold in public, Mickelson pitched to players in private: LIV guys could cherry-pick events from other tours; they would be eligible for majors; they would be hailed as innovators. Instead, the courts said no, the majors said ‘earn it’ and public opinion said they are pawns for sportswashing. The only legitimacy LIV can boast was conferred upon it via the Framework Agreement by the very tours it sought to topple.
The position argued by LIV and a few of its players on ranking points is grounded in the same trait that drew many to its ranks: entitlement. They’re entitled to enormous compensation that the open market has never considered feasible. They’re entitled to job security, regardless of performance. They’re entitled to entry into the most meaningful events on name recognition alone. They’re entitled to be ranked among the world’s best golfers despite almost never measuring themselves against the best. They’re entitled to be accommodated by a system they simultaneously deride as obsolete.
That sense of entitlement isn’t exclusive to LIV. It has disfigured elite golf, in the expectations of PGA Tour players who have never sold a ticket nor drawn an eyeball, and in the various entities that discreetly doffed their caps to Al-Rumayyan in hopes that his bankroll would eventually be directed toward them rather than ranged against them. The unseemly dash to be next in line at the trough has been underway for some time.
The bickering over world rankings is no different from every other combative cul-de-sac the sport has visited in the past two years. It boils down to one thing: guys who freely chose cash over competitive legitimacy, and who don’t think they should have to live with the consequences of their decisions. And that’s their problem, not the OWGR’s.