Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau Call for 'Inclusive' System to Allow LIV Players Into Majors
Given the success of a trio of LIV Golf League members at the Masters, the issue of world ranking points and whether those players who are competing in the rival circuit should be receiving them was among the topics broached in the leadup to this week’s LIV event in Singapore.
Specifically, Phil Mickelson—who tied for second with Brooks Koepka behind winner Jon Rahm at the Masters—and Bryson DeChambeau reiterated a theme that the Official World Golf Ranking is not accurate. And that if it doesn’t include LIV Golf players, another system or qualification criteria should be put in place. (Patrick Reed tied for fourth at the Masters.)
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"It’s going to all iron itself out because if you're one of the majors, if you're the Masters, you're not looking at 'we should keep these guys out.' You're saying to yourself, 'we want to have the best field, we want to have the best players, and these guys added a lot to the tournament this year at the Masters. How do we get them included?'" Mickelson said during a news conference Wednesday at Sentosa Golf Club, site of this week’s LIV Golf event.
"We have to come up with a qualifying mechanism that is inclusive, and if the World Golf Ranking isn't going to be inclusive, then they have to find another way. Maybe they take the top five or top 10 or winners of LIV, but they're going to have to find a way to get the best LIV players in their field if they want to have the best field in golf and be really what major championship is about. So they're already looking at that.
“If the World Golf Rankings doesn't find a way to be inclusive, then the majors will just find another way to include LIV because it's no longer a credible way. So it will all iron itself out for the simple reason that it's in the best interest of everybody, especially the tournaments, the majors, to have the best players."
Currently, LIV Golf events are not getting world ranking points, which has meant several players have seen their ranking plummet. Dustin Johnson, for example, who won LIV’s individual season title last year, was 15th in the world when he left for LIV Golf and is now outside the top 70 in the OWGR.
There have been similar drops among other players and the longer LIV golfers are not getting points, the more difficult it becomes for them to earn their way into major championship fields, if not exempt in some other way.
The Masters, U.S. Open and British Open all use the OWGR for qualification purposes, with the Masters and British using a top 50 OWGR baseline and the U.S. Open taking the top 60 at two different points in the spring.
The Masters had 18 LIV players in its field, with 12 who made the cut. The PGA Championship, which traditionally invites players who are ranked in the top 100, is currently projected to have nine LIV players when the tournament begins in three weeks.
LIV Golf submitted its formal application last July and the OWGR has offered little in the way of public communication, saying only that the bid is being reviewed. LIV Golf officials say they have answered questions related to their bid and are willing to make any necessary changes, if presented.
Mickelson’s suggestion that the majors would or should simply offer a separate exemption category does not seem imminent.
The Masters and PGA, for example, have never offered specific spots for the top players on the DP World Tour, formerly the European Tour. The U.S. Open invites players who have won twice on the PGA Tour in the past year and offers spots to various worldwide tours' Order of Merit leaders. The British Open is the only major that offers exemptions to the top players on the DP World Tour—top 30 in the final Race to Dubai standings.
It seems a stretch at this point to think that the majors will carve out a separate exemption category for LIV Golf when they have not been doing so for other prominent tours.
"You should realize that the OWGR is not accurate," DeChambeau said when the question was posed to him in Singapore. “I think that they need to come to a resolution or it will become obsolete. It's pretty much almost obsolete as of right now. But again, if the majors and everything continue to have that as their ranking system, then they are biting it quite heavily.
“Again, I'm in a lawsuit (LIV Golf is involved in an antitrust suit with the PGA Tour), so I can't say much more. I'd have much more to say. It's very disappointing that that's the way it goes because it's not right, and I hope people can see through that."
The OWGR handbook has a set of guidelines for tours that propose to get world ranking points—guidelines that it says are not all necessary to be met. The fact that it can grant approval without all the guidelines being met or deny approval even if they are has led to questions about the system.
Among the more obvious guidelines that LIV Golf is not meeting is the lack of a 36-hole cut for its 48-player events as well as no weekly access to the events for non-members. The field for this year is set, save for reserves on hand for injury. LIV Golf announced it will have a Promotions event after the season that will allow for three players to move into the League, along with the Order of Merit winner from the Asian Tour’s International Series.
The OWGR also suggests 75-player average field sizes although it does not specifically have an issue with 54-hole events.
As it currently stands, were the OWGR giving LIV points based on 48-player fields, the events would typically earn less than half the points being offered on the PGA Tour.