Is LIV finally re-seeking ranking status?

Report links OWGR and LIV Golf in conversation after previous petulant break-up

Joaquin Niemann would benefit from OWGR points with three 2025 LIV wins (Mateo Villalba/LIV Golf)

It never made sense to abandon the Official World Golf Ranking in the first place, but that’s what LIV Golf did early last year despite never making an good-faith attempt to meet the criteria that the OWGR board laid out in the fall of 2023 when it rejected its bid for accreditation.

LIV, more or less, took its ball and decided to go home, leaving players — especially those on the younger side without past major-victory status — in an impossible position as it relates to trying to earn points in order to qualify for the major championships.

It appears, however, that LIV Golf has had second thoughts. Sportico reported on Tuesday that the two sides are in talks again about LIV Golf getting world-ranking accredited. No details of the reported negotiations were offered.

New LIV CEO Scott O’Neill was said to be in talks with new OWGR chairman Trevor Immelman during the week of the Masters. Immelman, the 2008 Masters champion who works as the lead golf analyst for CBS, officially took over that OWGR role in April from former R&A CEO Peter Dawson.

Unless the OWGR changes its thinking or criteria, the same problems, however, would seem to be in play.

LIV’s 54-player league is a closed shop with no weekly turnover — unless there is an injury replacement. Its lack of promotion and relegation was also viewed as a problem. Last year, LIV Golf actually decreased the number of players coming through its promotions event from three to one.

OWGR has maintained that the player pathways is an issue compared to other tours that are accredited.

“We are not at war with them,” Dawson said in an interview with the Associated Press at the time the bid was denied. “This decision not to make them eligible is not political. It is entirely technical. LIV players are self-evidently good enough to be ranked. They’re just not playing in a format where they can be ranked equitably with the other 24 tours and thousands of players to compete on them.”

Among ideas suggested are to have a weekly team of qualifiers and perhaps another team — perhaps from the PGA Tour or TGL — that brings the field up to 60 each week. It means turnover of eight players per week.

There is still the thorny issue of the OWGR board, which is comprised of one person from each of the four major championships, along with PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, DP World Tour CEO Guy Kinnings and DPWT executive Keith Waters.

LIV Golf appears to be shedding the idea of team captain’s being exempt from being relegated — the six players beyond the top 48 are in theory supposed to be relegated out of the league. That would mean six others could join, providing the much-needed new blood that the OWGR would seemingly want.

Nobody from LIV Golf responded to the report. O’Neil was invited to the Masters recently and has been open to mending fences and being gracious, as opposed to his predecessor, Greg Norman, who took a more confrontational approach.

Norman first submitted an OWGR bid for LIV Golf in July of 2022, just more than a month into the league’s launch. At the time, LIV had just eight events and had no promotions event.

Several changes have occurred in the meantime, including the hiring of O’Neill and the expansion of the business to include more office space and several management hires. LIV continues to operate as if it will be around for the future, although it has struggled to gain much traction among golf fans in the United States.

Getting OWGR points is seen as a way to help LIV attract players even though they’d be playing for a fraction of what is available on the PGA Tour. Still, a player such as Joaquin Niemann — who has won three times this year on LIV Golf— would clearly be much higher up the world ranking chart than he is now in trying to earn points solely outside of LIV Golf.

LIV Golf faces the prospect of some of its player contracts coming up after this year and next and it didn’t sign any big-name players going into the 2025 season.

This week LIV plays its seventh of 14 events with a tournament in South Korea.