Xander Schauffele, the current Olympic winner, was thinking about the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) after LIV Golf pulled its bid to get ranking points on Tuesday because it didn’t like the way the system worked.
On a practice day before the PGA Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill in Orlando on Thursday, Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay, a member of the PGA Tour Policy Board, agreed that the LIV series’ ability might need to be measured in a different way.
Greg Norman, commissioner of the LIV, didn’t like the OWGR and said there was no settlement that “protects the accuracy, credibility, and integrity of the OWGR rankings.”
In the world’s top 50, only four players from the new series are listed. This is because LIV’s 54-hole events don’t grant OWGR points.
Fifth-ranked Schauffele will depend on those points to give him a chance to protect his Olympic gold this summer in Paris.
“I’m surely aware of it. Schauffele said of the Olympics, “It’s kind of in the back of my mind.” “I know there’s a lot of small things I need to do in order to qualify for the event, but first things first.”In order to make it to Paris, I need to keep having great weeks and keep my world ranking high enough.
At the moment, Schauffele would be joined on the US golf team in Paris by Scottie Scheffler (ranked number one), Patrick Cantlay (ranked number six), and Wyndham Clark (ranked number seven). However, five of Schauffele’s competitors are in the top 15.
There are four LIV golfers in the world’s top 50: #13 ranked Jon Rahm, who won the Masters last year; #17 ranked Tyrrell Hatton; #30 ranked Brooks Koepka, who won the PGA Championship last year; and #50 ranked Cameron Smith, who won the British Open in 2022.
Schauffele says that players from LIV should be better.
“This is kind of how it looks now that there is no OWGR,” Schauffele said. “But the LIV tour definitely has really good players, players that are in the top 10 or top 25 in the world, and there’s many of ’em.”Even though they aren’t ranked yet, I think they are the best players in the world.
– Need to change the rankings? –
Cantlay didn’t know what was going on with the merger talks between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which backs LIV. He was asked if the OWGR were broken because LIV players aren’t included in the standards.
“I think the world rankings has a very particular set of criteria and I don’t know if broken is the right word, but I think that there has been so much uncertainty and change in the last couple years that it’s inevitable that things need to be updated or changed,” Cantlay stated.
“I don’t know if we’ve worked through all the changes necessary, compared to all the changes that have happened in the last couple years.”
There have been worries that many of the world’s best golfers might miss out on major tournaments because of the rankings that are used to decide who can enter and who can get exemptions for major events.
He said, “That’s up to the majors to decide their fields.” “That’s not really on my radar.”
Schauffele praised the Masters for giving Chile’s Joaquin Niemann a special invitation. Niemann won the Australian Open to make sure he would play in this year’s British Open, but he has dropped to 76th in the world rankings despite winning two LIV Golf events this year.
Schauffele said, “I think that’s very something that deserves it.”
