LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman knowledgeable gamers on Tuesday that the league has withdrawn its utility for world-ranking factors.
The league requested accreditation with the Official World Golf Rating in July 2022 however final October rating officers denied that request as a result of “they’re simply not enjoying in a format the place they are often ranked equitably with the opposite 24 excursions and 1000’s of gamers attempting to compete on them,” Peter Dawson, the chairman of the rating board, instructed the Related Press.
“This isn’t a choice that we made flippantly,” Norman wrote in a memo to gamers who’re making ready for this week’s LIV Golf occasion in Hong Kong. “After spending the final 18 months in nearly fixed dialogue with numerous members of the OWGR Technical Committee and board, it’s now clear that one of the simplest ways ahead for LIV as a league and also you as LIV golfers just isn’t by means of the present rating system.
“A decision which protects the accuracy, credibility, and integrity of the OWGR rankings not exists.”
The world rating’s main concern with awarding the brand new league factors was a scarcity of participant pathways onto the brand new circuit in addition to the staff side of LIV Golf’s competitions. The league’s smaller fields and 54-hole format may very well be accounted for through mathematical format, Dawson mentioned.
“We have now made huge efforts to combat for you and to make sure your accomplishments are acknowledged throughout the present rating system,” Norman wrote. “Sadly, the OWGR has proven little willingness to productively work with us.”
Norman additionally referred to as for an impartial rating that acknowledges how the sport is “increasing and modernizing” and mentioned he plans “to hunt significant communication and relationship with every of the majors to make sure that LIV Golfers are pretty represented.”
There are simply 4 gamers from LIV Golf ranked inside the highest 50 on this planet – No. 3 Jon Rahm, No. 17 Tyrrell Hatton, No. 30 Brooks Koepka and No. 50 Cam Smith – and Norman conceded that even when his league have been granted rating factors “the system is designed such that it will be functionally unimaginable so that you can regain positions near the summit of the rating, the place so lots of you belong.”
Two weeks in the past, Augusta Nationwide introduced it was granting a particular invitation to LIV Golf’s Joaquin Niemann into this yr’s Masters and on Monday the PGA of America supplied an identical invitation for the Chilean to play the PGA Championship.
Following his victory on Sunday on the LIV Golf occasion in Saudi Arabia, his second triumph this yr, Niemann took one other shot on the rating when requested about his standing as a favourite heading into the most important championships. “How is that attainable if I’m like 100 on this planet?” Niemann shot again.