Jon Rahm and Dustin Johnson will be at Augusta, however 2023 LIV Player of the Year Taylor Gooch and former Australian Open champ Abraham Ancer will watch on from afar.
BUNKER-TO-BUNKER…
By Michael Court
SORT it out guys – please?
Because let’s be completely honest here . . . the world rankings mean zilch at the moment.
Why? Well, one example is the latest rankings have two-time major winner Dustin Johnson as the 266th ranked player in the world.
While another American you may not have heard of, Akshay Bhatia, is ranked in the top 100 (98th last time I looked).
Isn’t that ridiculous?
Sure, Jon Rahm still has a top-10 ranking, but that may plummet unless he wins a major.
My point here is it doesn’t really matter what these ‘official’ rankings say.
A brace of these superstars of the game jumped ship and were well-paid to do so – but that doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten how to play – or how good they are – or were.
Multiple winner on the LIV Tour Taylor Gooch doesn’t get a start in the US Masters.
Why would he? He’s ranked 476 in the world.
Brooks Koepka does get a start, but his ranking has already slumped to 30 . . . and we all know he’s better than that.
Gooch even had the temerity to suggest there should be an asterix beside some of these events because not all the best players in the world are competing.
And maybe one day some of those events will carry a bracket to point out that they were played without some of the LIV players in the field.
I just watched Mitchell Starc go past the greatest of all our fast bowlers Dennis Lillee on the list of all-time wicket-takers in Test cricket.
Yet still they refuse to add Lillee’s wickets taken in the Super Tests during World Series Cricket when they were playing the ‘rebel’ Tests against some of the best players in the world.
Maybe one-day they will acknowledge those wickets . . . but they’re taking their time about it.
And it’s easy for Gooch and co not to be too worried about being excluded from the majors.
They only have to check their bank balances to feel a lot better about themselves.
The time will come when the major golf tours of the world and LIV do come to an agreement and those players will find themselves in their rightful spot in the rankings – and in the majors.
The question is – when? And how?
By Larry Canning
Absolutely!
Whatever view you have on LIV Golf and yes, I get the point the players who signed up knew what they were getting themselves into, but if the current system used by the Official World Golf Ranking’s people is the only one used to gain entry into the most historic four events our game has, then yes, it’s completely busted.
If nothing changes with the OWGR system in the next 19 months and they remain the governing body overseeing the fields for the majors, then I fear for our great game.
It might sound surprising but I’m not exactly in the loop with the various committees who run the four majors but for the sake of our magnificent game and the continued relevance these amazing, historic championships all have, I pray they all have a plan to ensure the best players on the planet all get to play in the biggest tournaments in the world.
Having said that, I have really no idea how to fix it. Maybe whatever is being announced on the eve of the Masters by the PGA Tour, might be the ultimate repair job. As Rory now says, “It would be much better being together and moving forward together for the good of the game.”
I guess we will find out in a couple of weeks when Jay Monahan, assuming he’s still the guy in charge from the PGA Tour, is hopefully announcing the result of, dare I call it, “The Merger”.
By Michael Davis
I have always thought the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR) were a nonsense.
And that was long before the emergence of LIV Golf.
Now if you’re going to discount all the good players who have crossed to the ‘dark side’ by joining LIV, then the OWGR are an absolute nonsense.
I can never quite come to grips with the complicated formula by which they are calculated anyway.
To me it means absolutely nothing that a player becomes No 1 in the world at any given time based on how he or she has gone over the past three years.
As far as I’m concerned, major winners have ‘bragging rights’ way over any consistent performer who can attain an elite OWGR number may (in theory at least) never have saluted in a major.
It irked me, too, that golf long ago felt the need to join the far inferior sport of tennis and develop a world ranking system.
Now I can hear you all saying there is no better way to determine the field for any of the year’s majors than a ranking system.
But I beg to differ.
The learned men at Augusta may initially pay lip service to the OWGR but then invite whomever they like anyway.
The USGA (US Open) and the R & A (The Open) should, in my view, base entry into the event around where you finished the previous year and then have the power to handpick golfers they want in their events.
But I know I am ‘whistling Dixie’ on this one.
By Peter Owen
I’ve just about lost faith in the people who supposedly run world golf.
It’s nearly a year since the US-based PGA Tour announced plans for a merger with LIV Golf and the DP World Tour which is claimed would unify the game.
But nothing’s happened since. Indeed, the gap between LIV and the PGA is wider than ever – LIV continuing to poach players with obscene amounts of money, and the PGA pandering to its high-profile players by giving them equity in their tour.
How does any of that help unify the game?
The problem is that both sides are led by people with dominant egos, who see this as a power battle that one side or another has to win.
They’ve lost sight of the reality that world golf belongs to the millions of club and social golfers who play each weekend, who tune in to watch tournaments each week, and who spend countless billions on equipment manufactured by sponsors who bankroll those tournaments.
Without them there is no golf industry. And they’re being treated with utter contempt.
Cameron Smith, for example, is currently ranked 54 on the official rankings – 10 behind American Jake Knapp – and wouldn’t be playing in the US Masters had he not won the 2022 Open. Talor Gooch, the hottest player on the LIV Tour last year, is officially 498th and worlds away from being invited to any of the majors.
Golf fans simply want to see the best players in the world competing against each other on a week-to-week basis. Until Jay Monahan and Greg Norman and their lackeys understand this fact, Official World Golf Rankings are meaningless, and we’re all being treated like mugs.