The world ranking decides the future of the golfers who chose the Saudi circuit

Before getting into today’s topic, it is worth reviewing the statements of the executive director of Saudi Golf (Saudi Golf Federation), because beyond showing that he has some concepts to review, what he said has to do with the core of the column. “If they Majors They decide that LIV players can’t participate. I’m going to celebrate. Let’s create our own Majors”. The Majors in golf and tennis they have a history behind them that makes them what they are, traditions that make up the essence of the championship, a list of winners that are the best of the sport and scenarios that in some cases are more than 200 years old. Anyone with money can create a great Formula 1 race, build the most modern football stadium, hold a great tennis tournament or develop a high-level cycling event. All these new events will be able to have prize pools that surpass everything known. None of them will have the value of Monaco or Monza, Wembley or the Maracanã, Wimbledon or Roland Garros or the Tour de France. This also includes golf. There are things that are not bought and are only achieved with the passage of time. History and tradition are some of them.

Made the clarification we go to what concerns us today. The arrival of LIV Series -promoted by a Saudi fund- put on the table several topics for discussion and one of them is to determine whether or not these tournaments should have points for the world ranking. This is important because many of the major championships have world ranking as one of their qualifying criteria.

Unlike tennis, which has only one world circuit, the golf has different tours divided by region. PGA Tour (USA), DP World Tour (Europe), Asian Tour, Sunshine Tour (South Africa), Japan PGA Tour, Australasian Tour, PGA Tour Latin America, Korn Ferry Tour, etc. This has been the case forever, and it was only in the mid-1980s that someone came up with the idea of ​​setting up a ranking mundial. The initiative came from IMG and in 1986 the ranking made its debut with the German Bernhard Langer as number 1 in the world. The ranking took into account the last 3 years of competition, putting more emphasis on the most recent events. There were many complaints in those days because some said that the tournaments organized by IMG had more points, but the reality is that the ranking began to work and everyone began to look at it more and more often.

To finish giving transparency to the subject, the great world golf organizations together with the different circuits of the world created the OWGR (Organization World Golf Ranking), and it is this organization that today is responsible for preparing the ranking every week, as well as accepting requests for new circuits that have been appearing as a result of the growth of golf in the world.

It is not worth explaining the mathematical formula with which the ranking is calculated, but it is good to know that today the last two years are taken into account, that those two years are divided into 8 quarters and that the points that a player adds today it is losing them at the rate of an eighth every 3 months. If today a player wins 100 points in a tournament, in 3 months he will lose 12.5 points. You also have to know that those points that the player accumulates in those 24 months are divided by the minimum number of tournaments required. The minimum divisor is 40 and this means that if a player plays 30 tournaments he will divide by 40, while if he plays 50 tournaments in that period of time he will divide by 50.

However, not every professional golf tournament awards points for the world ranking. The events have to belong to one of the circuits approved by the OWGR and these circuits must meet a series of requirements to be admitted within the organization (calendar, places where they are going to play, prize pools, etc.) and wait for approval. to be able to enter. Once admitted the tour has to meet certain conditions that are the rules of the OWGR. Here some of them:

· Tournaments must be 72 holes, with the exception of development tours (minor circuits, with low pockets created to promote professional competition in a certain region)

· The tournaments must have a qualifying cut

· The average field throughout the calendar should be 70 players

The tour must have an open qualifying school before the start of each season so that anyone can enter

We may or may not like the rules, but they are the ones that the OWGR has put in place many years ago and everyone accepts them.

The LIV from the beginning has been fighting to have points, because that told his players that it was going to happen, and because they know that those points will give the circuit more importance. Some LIV players have come out to criticize the fact that they are not included in the distribution of points, but It is enough to read the requirements and we will realize that the LIV does not comply with any of them for now. They are 54 holes and it is clear that it is not a development tour, they have no court, there is no school and only 48 players participate. Several things will need to change at LIV for your request to go through.

The Chairman of the OWGR and former Executive Director of the R&APeter Dawson was clear about it. “The organization has had its rules for a long time. We have received the request from the LIV and it will be taken into account as we do whenever we receive a request for a new circuit. When the evaluation is finished, they will be given the corresponding answer,” Dawson said in an interview last month.

We all know that the issue at hand here is whether or not LIV players will be able to play the Majors from now on. Three of the four major tournaments (Masters, US Open and The Open) use world ranking as one of their selection criteria, and if LIV tournaments don’t have points for that ranking their players will start to drop to nothing. The PGA Championship is the only one that does not use the world ranking to establish part of its field, basically because the PGA of America has always had what they call PGA Points. This is a proprietary system where players accumulate points between the last edition of the championship and the next.

Could it happen then that the other three Majors develop their own points system like the one used by the PGA of America to determine the field of their events? Nothing would stop them. In any case, there is much to be entertained between now and the end of the year. It is tradition that the players already qualified for the Masters, the first big event, receive their invitations by mail in the last days of December. It will be around that date that some will find out if Augusta National Golf Club will receive them next April. Meanwhile the LIV players’ statements will continue to make noise and the silence from the other side will be stunning.

KEEP READING: