Getty Image / Michael Reaves
LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman reignited his public feud with the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR) this week, calling out the bias OWGR has against LIV Golf Tour members who do not receive OWGR points for competing in LIV events.
Norman took to social media where he shared a chart showing the TUGR rankings, OWGR, SI rankings, and Data Golf rankings. On X, Greg Norman shared the chart with the caption “Laughable. LIV would have 2 players in the top 50 OWGR if you exclude recent signees!”
Greg Norman / X
Greg Norman and LIV Golf have a legitimate gripe against OWGR. LIV players need those valuable OWGR points in order to qualify for Major Championships and LIV events do not (currently) meet the necessary criteria to receive OWGR points despite having incredible strength-of-field in every event.
Initially, LIV tournaments only being 54 holes instead 72 was a hurdle but LIV seemed to sort that out.
The biggest hurdle that still remains seems to be that Greg Norman‘s LIV events do not have a cut where the field gets halved for the weekend. That’s partially because with LIV there is no ‘weekend’ as it’s only 3 rounds and partially because many of the LIV Tour members have large contracts with the Tour and thus the Tour wants them on camera no matter the circumstances.
Again, Greg Norman has a legitimate gripe against OWGR. According to the TUGR rankings, LIV has 10 of the top 50 players in the world. By the SI rankings LIV has 9 of the top 50. LIV has 8 of the top 50 according to Data Golf. But with OWGR, LIV only has 5 players in the top 50 and would only have 2 without recent LIV Tour additions.
That’s because OWGR points expire after 13 weeks. So, the longer LIV golfers are on that tour the more OWGR points they lose, that is if they don’t perform at the top level in the Major Championships if they’re still eligible to compete in those.
Ultimately, the golf world has long since been ready to move on from the PGA Tour-LIV split and consequent beef. All parties involved, at least publicly, signal a need for acceptance. And this is all happening while there are ongoing discussions into a LIV-PGA Tour merger of sorts.
The only party involved that doesn’t seem ready to bend is OWGR, for now.