Getty Image / Chris Trotman / LIV Golf
The LIV Golf Tour is in Saudi Arabia this week for the final event of the tour’s first season. Wednesday was full of media appearances by LIV’s stars including a joint press conference with Dustin Johnson, Graeme McDowell, and former BroBible podcaster Harold Varner III (members of the 4 Aces GC team).
For anyone following the rise of the LIV Golf tour, it was a pretty fascinating press conference due in part to the juxtaposition of responses from Graeme McDowell and Harold Varner III. For his part, HV3 was basically like ‘I knew exactly what I was signing up for, none of this is surprising.’
In contrast to that, Northern Ireland golfer Graeme McDowell suggested that Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR) should remove ‘official’ from their title if LIV isn’t eventually awarded points. Here is what Harold Varner III and Graeme McDowell each had to say with quotes below and a video of the full press conference.
LIV Golf’s Graeme McDowell sounds off on Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR) and suggests they need to remove ‘official’ from their title while Harold Varner III reacts differently
“The word ‘Official’ has to go away from OWGR if they don't take care of the players out here."
– Graeme McDowell on #LIVGolf events and the possibility of world ranking points
More comments from Wednesday's press conference in Jeddah pic.twitter.com/le9smRXOnY
— LIVGolfComms (@LIVGolfComms) October 12, 2022
Graeme McDowell suggested ‘official’ needs to be removed from the OWGR name if LIV Golf players don’t start receiving points ASAP and retroactive points for events played… Then he went on to say:
“We all agree – and I think most people in the world of golf would agree – that the field out here is to a certain strength now where it’s impossible to ignore the talent that’s out here.
This guy standing in the middle of the three of us (Johnson), if his world ranking is inaccurate, then the whole system is inaccurate. So the only assurances we can get from LIV is that we are ticking all the boxes that we can tick and continue to do what is necessary for the OWGR to look at us the right way. Hopefully it’s inevitable, but the longer it goes on, the games that are being played – all we want is to have a fair court, to recognize exactly what it is that we are doing out here. I feel like LIV tried to do everything they possibly can to be legitimate in the eyes of the OWGR. We’ve got some quality, quality players out here.
We have a huge amount of deterioration in the current world ranking points for the guys out here, and if that doesn’t retroactively get taken care of, by the time that we do get ranking points, our strength of field is going to be relatively much less than it needs to be. So we just get hurt the longer this game gets played, and it needs to be taken care of ASAP.”
Harold Varner III sings a different tune
That is EXTREMELY different from the comments of Harold Varner III who was basically like ‘I knew this would happen, we all did.’ Here’s what HV3 had to say:
“We knew what we were getting into. I think it’s easy to sit here and say what could happen, what should happen. But obviously for me, I knew what was going to happen. It wasn’t going to be easy. I think the people at LIV did an unbelievable job, because I don’t know about the checkmarks (for OWGR points). Honestly, I could care less. I knew exactly what was going to happen. I knew what could happen in my career, and I accept that.”
You can watch the full LIV Golf press conference with Graeme McDowell, Dustin Johnson, and Harold Varner III here
The primary issue at hand here is with every passing week, LIV Tour players are losing valuable Official World Golf Ranking points that are needed to qualify for golf’s 4 Major Championships (The Masters, US Open, PGA Championship, Open Championship) and the Ryder Cup.
LIV Golf thought they’d figured out a workaround by partnering with the MENA Tour (Middle East + North Africa) but Official World Golf Rankings say ‘not so fast’ and announced the review would take quite some time.
Ryder Cup legend Sergio Garcia’s OWGR points have already depreciated so much that he’s no longer in consideration for the next Ryder Cup and that same fate will soon meet most if not all of the LIV Golf Tour memebers.