SNAKE IT TIL YOU MAKE IT: LIV Golf May Have Just Exploited A Loophole To Earn Official World Golf Ranking Points At Their Events
Aitor Alcalde/LIV Golf. Getty Images.The story above is paywalled, so I'll do my best to explain exactly what may or may not be going on here. There aren't any reports yet corroborating whether or not OWGR is honoring this power play, but we'll see. If you're unfamiliar with OWGR and why it matters in this PGA Tour vs. LIV war, a good place to start is this primer I wrote a few months back:
Anywho, LIV Golf's application for OWGR points has been held up for months. The leaders of the traditional golf powers that be are the ones who make up the OWGR board that determine an applicant's status. They've shown about as much hustle as Judge Smails standing over a putt when it comes to making a decision on LIV Golf's application and understandably so. The longer they wait to approve it, the more LIV Golf players tumble down the current rankings and diminish the weight that LIV Golf events would have for OWGR points once (or if) they do get approved.
As LIV Golf has accumulated more and more power and legitimacy, the OWGR board has been put in a tough spot where the credibility of their organization is further and further challenged. How can their rankings be taken seriously if 48 of the better golfers in the world are virtually ignored? Rory McIlroy, maybe the biggest PGA Tour defender out there, even said as such:
“I certainly would want the best players in the world ranked accordingly. I think if Dustin Johnson is somewhere around 100th in the world then it’s not an accurate reflection of where he is in the game."
The OWGR board is stuck between a rock and a hard place on that one, and it feels like they are going to have to let LIV in in some capacity eventually. It stands to reason that they weren't going to make that approval until at least after the LIV golf season wraps up late this month. That way LIV golfers would continue to plummet down the rankings as a variety of major qualification deadlines (for example, top 50 in the OWGR at December 31st gets into the 2023 Masters) approach and they'd have little to no avenues to earn points before next year's LIV schedule kicks off in February.
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LIV has tried to combat these efforts to give their guys a fighting chance. Most notable is a partnership and investment in the Asian Tour. Some guys (namely, Patrick Reed) have played Asian Tour events in an effort to collect OWGR points and keep their world ranking afloat. It's a helpful avenue, but it hardly tips the scales if the vast majority of LIV guys aren't playing those events to strengthen those fields… which they're not.
Enter the MENA Tour. It's a developmental tour based in Dubai that plays events in the Middle East and North Africa. Hence, MENA Tour. And guess what the MENA Tour is qualified for? Those tasty OWGR points.
But here's the rub. The MENA Tour is a far, far cry from a major tour. Their leading money winner when they last held a full season piled up a whopping $45,153 back in 2019. They didn't even have a 2018 season for reasons I can't quite figure out. They hadn't teed it up since the pandemic either other than a few "co-sanctioned" events this year with the Asian Tour. That's a key word here. "Co-sanctioned".
So what LIV has reportedly done here is form an alliance with MENA to "co-sanction" their events. All LIV Golf events are now also MENA Tour events. It's no different than the PGA and European Tour teaming up to run the Scottish Open and WGC's and a variety of other events throughout the year. So with that, the MENA Tour is suddenly kicking their season off on Friday with the LIV Golf event in Bangkok.
That means that OWGR points are available at LIV Golf this week and moving forward. Or at least that's the expectation that LIV Golf has. Hell, Brooks Koepka's new bride is already victory lapping this one.
The biggest holdup on LIV Golf for OWGR qualification is that their tournaments are 54 holes and not 72 holes. But apparently the 72-hole stipulation only refers to the majority of events on a given Tour. LIV Golf plans to hold 14 events for their 2023 season. To counterbalance those events that would also now fall on the MENA Tour schedule, the MENA Tour will hold 15 additional events on their own that AREN'T LIV Golf events, all of which will be 72-hole events. That way the MENA Tour's schedule consists of a "majority" (15 of 29 events) of 72-hole events and maintains their OWGR point eligibility.
The MENA Tour was long ago approved to include 54-hole events on their schedule and still get OWGR points. There was a press release on OWGR's website in 2016 that has since disappeared (they revamped their website a few months ago and a ton of pages have 404 errors) but I was able to dig out this tweet detailing how those points were treated.
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The points are certainly diminished for 54 hole events vs 72 hole events, but points are points. LIV Golf will take them any way they can get them right now.
By adding the MENA Tour, LIV Golf would also be adding a "developmental tour" to go with the Asian Tour, which would add some credibility to the idea that their operation is based on meritocratic virtues. Which it's not, but it's all about appearances.
This partnership with the MENA Tour is a gigantic farce, but a pretty brilliant one if you ask me. LIV Golf has put their foot in their mouth a bunch of times and there's been a lot of questioning of the lawyering on their end, but this is a masterpiece. Gotta hand it to em. Loophole city.
All of this said, I've yet to see any confirmation that OWGR will be honoring these points. It feels like their hands are tied here. It's also hard to ignore that LIV Golf used the term "strategic alliance" to mock the PGA and European Tour here. Brilliant. Just brilliantly petty.
Just another day in the life of this ongoing saga…