Calculating an Unofficial Ranking of LIV Golfers in 2022 (Hint: Dustin Johnson's Still the Best)

Gary Van Sickle crunched scores, not dollars, to see how players in the Saudi-backed league really fared against each other, and some results are surprising.

The players of LIV Golf sure seem grumpy considering they knew what they signed up for when they jumped to the rival league/Rebel Alliance—banishment from all things PGA Tour.

They’re watching their Official World Golf Rankings go down the toilet, spinning the other direction if they’re south of the equator, since they’re not earning points anymore. Still, they made the best bank withdrawal of anyone in sports—more than $2 billion courtesy of a Saudi Arabian public investment fund. So cue the old joke: A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Why the long face?”

Maybe LIV players would feel happier as they guffawed all the way to the bank if they had their own world rankings. The pencil-pushers at The Ranking are here to help.

LIV Golf has a money list but it’s skewed with $4 million first prizes and team money and an $18 million bonus to the leading point-getter (Dustin Johnson) so as a measure of performance, the LIV money list is flawed. (The Ranking wants to be flawed, too. Checks and Venmo accepted.)

What follows is a better way to measure LIV Golf players and how they performed against their LIV opponents. It’s a simple won-loss-tie system. In each tournament, a player earns a record of how many golfers he finished ahead of, lost to or tied with. A LIV tournament winner would have a 47-0-0 mark that week. A player who tied for second with two other players would be 44-1-2. A player who tied for last with one other competitor in the 48-man field would be 0-46-1.

The Ranking researched all seven LIV Golf individual events and calculated the player records. No slide rules were harmed during this process.

There are minor inherent flaws in what we’re calling the LIV Golf Power Rankings (LGPR) but the simplicity makes them effective and delivers a readily understandable ranking for fans, journalists and other species.

There’s one catch. Don’t rely on the LIV Golf’s website for results in its player bios. LIV doesn’t allow for ties due to the points system it uses for its bonus pool. What’s that mean? It means when Matthew Wolff and Dustin Johnson tie for second at LIV Bedminster, Wolff gets credit with a second-place finish on his player page and Johnson gets credit for a third, believe it or not, even though they shot the same scores and got the same prize money.

This is done to determine LIV season-long points. The player who shot the lower final-round is credited with the better finish. If that doesn’t break the tie, it goes to the best back-nine score, although LIV uses a shotgun start from all 18 tees, so one player’s back nine might actually be his first nine. Yes, this is omg crazy.

The more players who tie, the dumber this concept looks. Paul Casey, Sergio Garcia, Turk Pettit, Lee Westwood and Talor Gooch tied for sixth in Bedminster at 4 under par. They each won $648,000. But only Casey officially finished sixth, according to his bio. Garcia is seventh; Pettit, eighth; Westwood, ninth; and Gooch, 10th. Who wants to tell Gooch that he tied for sixth on the leaderboard but actually finished 10th? Well, he pocketed $648 thou, he’s not going to care.

This mind-numbingly bad idea is egregious because it undercuts LIV Golf’s statistics and undermines its already shaky credibility. Worse, it’s done for a points system that few fans know of and even fewer care about. The good news is, this mistake is easily fixed if someone at LIV Golf who knows golf wakes up. Otherwise, the LIV Golf player bios are going to provide wrong finish information in journalists’ stories. (That’s just hypothetical, of course, since hardly anybody writes about LIV results, just its far sexier legal cat-fight with the PGA Tour.) Until then, ignore results from LIV player bios and use only actual leaderboard place-finishes for your LIV results needs.

The Ranking’s own LGPR for the 48 LIV golfers who played a minimum of four events (to qualify for this coveted ranking) are at the bottom of this page.

First, for the stat averse, here are the first-ever LGPR highlights …

The Big Dog: If you thought Dustin Johnson was LIV’s dominant player, you thought right. His mark of 291-29-9 (he finished ahead of 291 players, behind 29 players and tied 9 players) equates to an .898 percentage that was best on the tour. He won once, finished second, had two thirds, a fifth and an eighth in seven starts. His team won the team title, too, and he walked away with $40 million in eight events. Anybody second-guessing his decision to leave the PGA Tour? Didn’t think so …

Break out the bubbly, DJ, you're tops in The Ranking's LGPR. OK, there's the $40 million, too :: Lynne Sladky/AP

Big Dog, No Bark: Joaquin Niemann (154-25-9, .843) quietly ranked No. 2 in percentage-based performance behind Johnson. Yeah, you would have guessed the low-profile Niemann on, oh, your 27th try. Niemann didn’t win in four starts but did finish second, third and fourth. That pays well in this league …

If It Pleases The Court: You may have missed Patrick Reed (209-58-15, .768) during his LIV summer. He was consistent—second, third, fifth and twice 12th in six starts. He did not get a win, so he’ll probably add The Ranking to his next media lawsuit for pointing that out…

Welcome to the Pension Plan: Two mild LIV surprises were members of the old guard, using that term only in the most positive way possible. A pair of 49-year-olds more than held their own. Lee Westwood (.702 win percentage, ranked 8th) and Richard Bland (.552, ranked 19th) clawed in $4.2 and $3.5 mill, respectively. Senior tour golf? You’ll need wild horses and explosives to drag these guys away from the Saudi money trough …

It Takes Two: They weren’t exactly the Property Brothers but Team Koepka did pretty well. Brooks (.699, ranked 10th) won the final individual event to salvage a LIV season (and $8.27 million) in which he’d had only one top-10 finish until then. Chase (.509, ranked 24th) finished ahead of more players than he finished behind, a feat few critics expected. He also scored $4.3 mill overall (more than Westwood!), with a little help from his friends/teammates/big brother …

The Surprise Player of the Year (SPOY, as insiders know it): Give a hand to Peter Uihlein, a global traveler who’d done OK in the last dozen years but hit the Lotto jackpot when he was invited to join LIV, a select field he didn’t really have the credentials for. Uihlein, who finished second twice, validated his membership. He ranked 18th with a .593 win percentage and amassed $12.8 mill, enough to hire a really good international tax attorney…

The Phil Fail: The biggest name who reportedly got the biggest LIV signing bonus, Phil Mickelson, was a disappointment. He ranked 37th and had a meager win percentage of .368. Well, he had a bad public relations year in addition to the fact that he turned 52 and looks like his game might not be good enough to win even on PGA Tour Champions, not that he’s ever going to play there again …

The Mendoza Line: The Ranking doesn’t know how a player plays his way off LIV Golf but somebody has to bring up the bottom of the stats the way light-hitting baseball shortstop Mario Mendoza earned his own anemic batting average nickname. For LIV, Marc Leishman and Graeme McDowell, each at .354 and ranked 38th, were mild surprises given their past star turns in major championships. They underperformed … Pat Perez was .319 and ranked 40th but on the right team—The Four Aces, who won the team title, and Perez hauled in $8 million, $7 mill for being buds with Dustin Johnson … How did Wade Ormsby (.254, 43rd) and Shaun Norris (.252, 44th) get in this league? Well, it’s not because they sold tickets … The man at LIV rock bottom was Hudson Swafford, who had perfect attendance but ranked 47th, had a .229 win percentage and no finish better than 29th. That’s still a better average than Mendoza or Bob Uecker. Plus, Swafford earned $1.2 mill for capturing the opposite of the LIV’s pole position. And there’s always that lawsuit against the PGA Tour …

The Ranking's "LGPR"

1. Dustin Johnson  291-29-9  .898

2. Joaquin Niemann  154-25-9  .843

3. Patrick Reed  209-58-15  .768

4. Paul Casey  165-51-19  .743

5. Branden Grace  204-69-9  .739

6. Sergio Garcia  230-83-16  .723

7. Talor Gooch   223-88-18  .705

8. Lee Westwood  221-88-20  .702

9. Matthew Wolff  193-80-9  .700

10. Brooks Koepka  189-77-16  .699

11. Carlos Ortiz  182-84-16  .699

12. Cameron Smith  118-63-7 . 646.

13. Bryson DeChambeau  175-96-11  .640

14. Charles Howell III  144-81-10  .634

15. Louis Oosthuizen  200-115-14  .629

16. Charl Schwartzel  196-125-8  .608

17. Abraham Ancer  132-87-16  .596

18. Anirban Lahiri  105-70-13  .593

19. Peter Uihlein  188-127-14  .593

20. Richard Bland  176-142-11  .552

21. Jason Kokrak  117-94-24  .549

22. Eugenio Chacarra  122-100-13  .547

23. Laurie Canter  167-142-20  .538

24. Ian Poulter  161-152-16  .514

25. Chase Koepka  154-148-27  .509

26. Harold Varner III  89-86-13  .508

27. Matt Jones  157-155-17  .503

28. Martin Kaymer  130-132-20  .496

29. Henrik Stenson  84-89-15  .487

30. Kevin Na  128-137-17  .484

31. James Piot  148-169-12  .468

32. Sam Horsfield  146-167-16  .468

33. Phachara Khongwatmai  133-173-23  .439

34. Cameron Tringale  69-103-16  .410

35. Sihwan Kim  108-162-12  .404

36. Bernd Wiesberger 118-195-16  .383

37. Scott Vincent  117-197-15  .378

38. Phil Mickelson  112-199-18  .368

T39. Marc Leishman  60-115-13  .354

T39. Graeme McDowell  107-203-19  .354

41. Pat Perez  84-186-12  .319

42. Jediah Morgan  92-214-23  .315

43. Sadom Kaewkanjana  88-223-18  .295

44. Wade Ormsby  76-238-15  .254

45. Shaun Norris  74-237-18  .252

46. Turk Pettit  73-243-13  .242

47. Hideto Tanihara  50-176-9  .232

48. Hudson Swafford  63-241-25  .229