Ranking LIV Golf's Best Players Through Its First Two Seasons

Gary Van Sickle used results in LIV Golf events as well as majors to see who is the best since the Saudi-backed league began in June 2022.

The excitement is building to a crescendo.

No, wait. That’s the PGA Tour’s new “FedEx Cup Fall,” which is a lot like the old FedEx Cup Fall only with bigger purses and more of those tiresome FedEx Cup points.

The Ranking meant LIV Golf, which has been on holiday (probably FedEx Cup-induced). LIV Golf has three events left, starting next week with a return to the Chicago area’s Rich Harvest Farms.

While you were sweating out that unforgettable FedEx Cup finale (Viktor Hovland won so don’t bother looking it up), The Ranking updated its proprietary LIV Golf Rankings. (Well, when its staff wasn’t betting Women’s World Cup soccer matches—Japan, you brought shame to our account!)

These LIV Golf rankings are not complicated math, which doesn’t prevent The Ranking from making mistakes that would dismay its fifth-grade teacher in the unlikely event she was still alive—she’d be at least 125 by now.

Here’s how the rankings work: We count how many opponents a player beats, loses to or ties each week in the 48-player LIV Golf events. When Dustin Johnson won, for instance, his record that week was 47-0-0. When Sergio Garcia finished 45th in this year’s Orlando event, he earned a 3-44-0 mark. Simple. LIV Golf hasn’t played that many tournaments so these rankings include all 2022 and 2023 results.

Pop the champagne for Cameron Smith, The Ranking's top LIV golfer according to some uncomplicated math :: Danielle Parhizkaran/USA TODAY Network

In addition, we included how LIV Golf players finished in the four majors. We capped the number of players in those at 88 to match the Masters field in order to make the four majors equal in value. A dead-last, missed cut at the U.S. Open counted as 0-87-0 instead of 0-155-0, for instance. That still makes the majors nearly double in value compared to a regular LIV tournament.

Nobody else is ranking the LIV Golf guys (Ed. note: Actually, SI Golf ranks LIV players against players from all other global tours.) but somebody ought to. So we do. Here again are highlights, low lights and Bud Coors Lights from The Ranking’s (flawed) numbers…

The Bermuda Tringale

Shouldn’t that be Triangle? No, the not-an-anagram Cameron Tringale is clearly the biggest surprise of the LIV rankings. He ranks No. 2 in the World of LIV (or Greg Norman’s DreamWorld as it’s also known.) Tringale’s only PGA Tour victory was an off-season team event with Jason Day. He qualified to play in only one Masters in 14 years and he hasn’t won a LIV title, either, so how’s this former Georgia Tech player doing it? Stubborn consistency. His last eight finishes are T18, T12, T5, T8, T9, T18, T11 and T3. It adds up to nearly $5 million in winnings. That’s a Late Grin (an actual anagram). 

The Other Cameron

Last year’s LIV Golf Chicago event featured a nice homage to Aussie Cameron Smith. Two barbers provided free mullet cuts in the popular fan area in honor of Smith’s famous throwback mullet. Smith vaulted past Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka into No. 1 in the LIV World Rankings thanks to a 2023 streak of seven top-10 finishes in eight weeks that included a victory in London. However, he is not the hot ticket he was when he won the 2022 Open Championship at St. Andrews because he’s just not getting the global-audience exposure he was then, despite coming in ninth at the PGA Championship and fourth at the U.S. Open. For LIV’s world-No. 1, it’s hair today, gone tomorrow.

The Phil-tanic

Mike Stobe/Getty Images

LIV’s biggest drawing card, Phil Mickelson, doesn’t rank in the top 40 of this 48-man league. He is No. 45 with a dismal .330 winning percentage. It’s hard to believe he made a run at the Masters last April but let’s agree he is that rare bird who plays better on big stages and LIV, despite its best efforts, is a lucrative-but-still-small stage. In 17 LIV events over two years, Phil has only four top-15 results. It’s a good thing he’s a contract player (reportedly $200 million for three years) because his on-course winnings equate to only a decent year on the incredibly less lucrative PGA Tour Champions. But he did tie for second in Augusta last April, which ought to be worth a Green Bandana or something.

The Mendoza Line

Former Stanford University star Sihwan Kim has been battling swing issues and unfortunately ranks 49th and last in the LIV rankings with a Mario Mendoza-like (think Bob Uecker as a light-hitting utility infielder instead of a light-hearted catcher) win percentage of .167. In 16 events, Kim placed dead last six times and finished better than 40th only three times. The Ranking hopes he has a long-term contract. Otherwise, the Asian Tour will be on speed dial soon.

Dusted, Johnson

Once upon a time, Dustin Johnson was considered LIV Golf’s dominant player. This year, he’s been just pretty good. He won a LIV title in Tulsa this season—would you believe that’s only his second career LIV win?—and his last four LIV starts include a fifth, T8, T11 and a T32. Johnson, 39, also badly missed the British Open cut. That’s not DJ-like, which is why he slipped to No. 3 in these rankings. He may prove to be the biggest missing piece on the U.S. Ryder Cup team when it plays in Italy soon. The U.S. team could do a Celine-Dion-in-Titanic move—its heart will go on. Or it could be Leonardo DiCaprio and frostily sink beneath the waves. (Ranking internal memo: How many Titanic references are you going to make in one column? C’mon, man.) The Ranking expects DJ to finish strong in the last three LIV events, however.

Chasing Validation

There is no doubt that Chase Koepka, brother of Brooks, is in LIV thanks to his brother’s stardom. Chase had his moments last year on LIV (one top-10, two top-20 finishes) and held up his end in the lucrative team portion of the competition (which we don’t need to discuss). This year, he’s not getting it done. In nine events, Chase has one top-25 finish (a T24 in Adelaide) and six finishes of 40th or worse. His win percentage is .318—a good number for baseball’s Steve Garvey but not good in match play where it means he’s being beaten by twice as many opponents as he’s beating. The numbers, 221-495-26, rank him 46th as he slowly drifts toward the dreaded Sihwan Kim Zone.

Captain Planet Meets Major Consistent

With no updates on his two pending lawsuits against an assortment of golf figures, Patrick Reed has been off the radar. Never mind his legal efforts. The former Masters champ has been LIV’s steadiest performer. Reed has eight top-5 finishes, placed fourth at this year’s Masters and is rated No. 4 in our rankings. Oddly, he has not won a LIV title but his game travels well. He earned seconds in Bangkok and London; thirds in Portland, Adelaide and Orlando; and fifths at Valderrama (Spain) and Bedminster (TrumpWorld). With the Ryder Cup approaching, he’s been quiet … too quiet.

It’s Mito, Not Me Too

The Ranking can’t call Chile’s Mito Pereira a one-hit wonder since he didn’t win that PGA Championship in Tulsa to get the one hit but he has been a pleasant surprise in LIV. He ranks fifth, just ahead of Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau. Since joining LIV in 2023, Pereira has placed among the top six five times, including a runner-up finish at the Greenbrier. That near-miss in Tulsa was clearly no fluke.

Three of a Kind

Talor Gooch had a lackluster season in the majors, which The Ranking's ranking took note of :: Vincent Carchietta/USA TODAY Sports

This sounds unlikely but it’s true: Brooks Koepka is tied for the most career LIV Golf wins—three—with … Talor Gooch? Count the basket. Yet Gooch stands only 16th in The Ranking despite those three wins. Blame his major championship appearance for his slide. He missed cuts at the PGA and the British Open and wielded a 49-203-4 mark in this year’s majors, hurting his win percentage, now down to .568. He also missed the cut at last year’s U.S. Open. But he’s got three LIV W’s. That’s $12 million before taxes. After taxes, it’s a lot less. Gooch said “it sucked” when he learned that Australia socked him for almost $2 mill of his $4 mil windfall in Adelaide. He forgot that nobody likes to hear rich people bitch about how much tax they pay. They’re still rich and we’re not.

The Brooks Effect

The only LIV Golf player to make either Ryder Cup team, Brooks Koepka has slipped a bit since his PGA Championship win. His last three outings: British Open, 64th; London, 17th; Greenbrier, 38th. His missed cut at last year’s Open Championship hurt his won-loss mark in The Ranking or he’d be better than only sixth. Three LIV wins and four other top 5s mean he probably ought to be closer to the No. 1 spot that he previously held. If you picked a No. 1 player using only your own eyes, he would be No. 1. Unless you need bifocals, in which case …

The Ryder Cup Non-Dilemma

The LIV Golf issue didn’t really affect the European Ryder Cup team. Which LIV Golf player deserved to make the 12-man team? No one. Nobody is among the top 10 in these LIV Golf rankings and only two players cracked the top 20—Paul Casey at 15th and fired-turncoat-Ryder captain Henrik Stenson, 20th. Sergio Garcia, the all-time winningest European Ryder Cupper, is 29th. Casey and Stenson didn’t qualify to play in any majors this year and Garcia had only two top-10 LIV finishes, including a playoff loss to Gooch in Singapore; has never won a LIV title; missed the Masters cut; and was 27th at the U.S. Open. Case closed.