LIV Golf is finally recognised by the Official World Golf Ranking — just not in the way the rebel tour wanted to be.
After a years long battle, world ranking points will be handed out at LIV Golf tournaments, starting from this week at the Saudi-backed league’s season-opener in Riyadh.
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But the decision by the OWGR comes with heavy caveats that have left LIV Golf just as incredulous as it was when it had no points.
Here’s a full explanation of Wednesday’s (AEDT) decision.
WHAT WAS THE OWGR DECISION?
There are two key elements to the OWGR’s decision to recognise LIV Golf events.
The first is that only the top-10 players at a tournament will be awarded world-rankings points for their performance, meaning that 47 players at each event will get nothing.
The second is that the total amount of points awarded will not be the full allotment seen at full-field PGA Tour events.
Those who do win points only do so under the classification of a ‘small field tournament’.
That means the distribution of OWGR points is heavily scaled down.
’UNPRECEDENTED’ GOLF BOMBSHELL AS LIV LEFT FUMING OVER DOUBLE-EDGED RULING
According to the OWGR, the winner in Riyadh this week is projected to win 23.03580 points.
For comparison, the winner of this weekend’s Waste Management Phoenix Open is projected to scoop 59.26054.
The main discrepancy is that the Phoenix Open has a drastically higher ‘field rating’, which is determined by the OWGR’s ‘strokes gained world rating’ of players.
The higher the field rating, the higher the points projected for the winner. The strongest field rating seen in 2025 was at the US PGA Championship, in which winner Scottie Scheffler clinched 100 OWGR points.
Few will argue that the huge windfall for winning a major isn’t fair.
What will rankle, however, is how LIV Golf now compares to other world events recognised by the OWGR.
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None raise eyebrows more than the Hero World Challenge — a glorified exhibition in the Bahamas hosted by Tiger Woods which features just 20 top-ranked pros.
Last year, winner Hideki Matsuyama pocketed more than 30 points for beating just 19 other players in a tournament well outside the regular PGA Tour season.
Even Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee, one of the staunchest critics of LIV Golf since its inception, said the Hero getting world ranking points is “hard to defend”.
WHY THE SHORTFALL?
It comes down to the OWGR refusing to budge over key criteria that LIV Golf still does not meet.
This year, LIV Golf will for the first time stage 72-hole tournaments despite partly wooing players with its reduced 54-hole format. Not for nothing, LIV is 54 in Roman numerals.
That change alone was enough for the OWGR to soften its stance on LIV and offer some points, but it wasn’t enough to win the full bonanza.
In its statement, the OWGR pointed to multiple roadblocks that remain.
LIV Golf fields of just 57 players is still well below the OWGR standard of at least 75.
Also cited was the lack of a mid-tournament cut.
Furthermore, the OWGR flagged restrictive pathways to LIV Golf, pointing out that some stars were “self-selected” rather than earning their spots in the league, while others have lost out “based on their nationality rather than for meritocratic reasons.”
For example, Japan’s Jinichiro Kozuma was dropped for this season despite finishing 32nd on the LIV Golf standings. Despite a mid-table finish, he was axed to make room for Iron Heads GC to be rebranded as Korean Golf Club, which has an all-Korean line-up.
OWGR chair Trevor Immelman said that its decision was made with equity in mind.
“We fully recognised the need to rank the top men’s players in the world but at the same time had to find a way of doing so that was equitable to the thousands of other players competing on other tours that operate with established meritocratic pathways,” he said.
“We believe we have found a solution that achieves these twin aims and enables the best-performing players at LIV Golf events to receive OWGR points.”
CAN LIV STARS PLAY THEMSELVES INTO MAJORS NOW?
Technically, yes. Though it will remain difficult given the limited amount of points on offer.
Two of the four majors — the Masters and Open Championship — demand a player sit inside the world’s top-50 to earn an exemption, if they don’t qualify for any other passage.
The number rises slightly at the US Open to the world’s top-60.
The PGA Championship does not have a specific exemption that pertains to OWGR ranking alone, though it’s known to typically offer invites to top-100 golfers who do not already have an exemption.
This means for the majority of LIV Golf’s roster — who have not won a major and cannot expect to routinely finish inside the top-10 — playing into the majors via the rebel tour remains a pipedream.
Their best bets remain grinding via alternative routes, such as local qualifiers or a collection of Asian and/or DP World Tour events, depending on what major is being targeted.
For major winners, the picture is a little murkier and varies depending on what major was won, and when.
Cameron Smith, for example, will be exempt at the Open Championship every year until he’s 60. His sole claret jug, however, only gives him entry to the world’s other three majors through 2027.
Winners of the Masters and PGA Championship are exempt at the tournament they won for life, whereas the US Open restricts its champions to a 10-year pardon.
HOW COULD THE RANKINGS LOOK?
All of this has been to say that playing into the majors will remain tough, but not impossible, as the data shows.
Well known golf stats account @Robopz crunched the numbers after the OWGR announcement to see what the rankings would look like had LIV been awarded points for the past two years (the OWGR standings operate on a rolling two-year cycle).
The numbers show that 11 LIV players would be inside the OWGR’s top-100; Jon Rahm (11), Bryson DeChambeau (14), Joaquin Niemann (16), Tyrrell Hatton (24), Patrick Reed (26), Carlos Ortiz (64), Laurie Canter (74), Dean Burmester (80), Sergio Garcia (88), Tom McKibbin (93) and David Puig (94).
Marc Leishman is LIV’s top Australian at 107th, while Cameron Smith was adjusted to 129th, down from his actual 221st.
While this offers some glimmer of hope to LIV stars looking to rise up the rankings, it shows that the feats to get inside the top-50 need to be some level of extraordinary.
Rahm is evidence of what can happen with consistently great performance. Remarkably, he has only ever finished outside the top-10 once in two seasons on LIV Golf, coming T11 in Dallas in June, while he’s won two events, both in 2024.
DeChambeau’s elevated ranking is largely thanks to his performance at the majors, winning the 2024 US Open, while notching two runner-up finishes and three other top-10s in the past two years. He also won LIV Korea last year.
Meanwhile, Niemann was arguably LIV Golf’s best player in 2025, winning in Adelaide, Singapore, Mexico City, Virginia and the UK.
The only other players elevated to inside the OWGR’s top-50 are Hatton and Reed, who are notably far more active on the DP World Tour than most of their LIV Golf colleagues.
WHAT NEXT?
More unrest, and more uncertainty.
LIV Golf’s strongly-worded statement made it clear that it is unsatisfied with the decision and will continue to push for “a transparent, credible, and accurate ranking based on the relative performances of players participating in male Eligible Golf Tours worldwide.”
“Limiting points to only the top 10 finishers disproportionately harms players who consistently perform at a high level but finish just outside that threshold, as well as emerging talent working to establish themselves on the world stage—precisely the players a fair and meritocratic ranking system is designed to recognise,” LIV Golf said in a statement.
“No other competitive tour or league in OWGR history has been subjected to such a restriction. We expect this is merely a first step toward a structure that fully and fairly serves the players, the fans, and the future of the sport.”
Even stronger was the summary of an anonymous LIV insider, who told Telegraph Sport: “This is a ludicrous cop-out”.
The failure to gain full recognition by the OWGR withholds the potential to further destabilise a playing group that’s already on shaky ground.
This year, Brooks Koepka and Reed left LIV Golf and will both be PGA Tour players again by the season’s end. Koepka has already returned while Reed will be a DP World Tour regular until one year since his last LIV Golf event elapses.
Meanwhile, intrigue continues to swirl around DeChambeau, who is entering the final year of his LIV Golf contract and is said to be leveraging those departures in asking for a reported figure of $500m (A$712m).
DeChambeau has already been rocking the boat by this week openly declaring that he, and other players, “didn’t sign up” to play 72-hole events.
Those words bring back memories of a parting shot by one-time prodigy Eugenio Chacarra, who slammed LIV Golf on his departure in early 2025, saying that promises were broken.
“When I joined LIV, they promised OWGR and majors. But it didn’t happen. I trusted them,” he said.
“I was the first young guy, then the others came after I made the decision. But OWGR and majors still hasn’t happened.”
Even with Wednesday’s announcement, little has changed, serving only to cloud the future of the breakaway league further.
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