Will LIV golfers acquire world rating points quickly? The determination will not be within the palms of the MENA Tour, however slightly the OWGR.
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The warfare for world rating points raged on Thursday because the commissioner of the Middle East and North Africa Tour (MENA), which simply entered an alliance with LIV Golf, responded to the Official World Golf Ranking’s determination to say no points for this week’s occasion.
MENA’s message, in brief: We’re going to maintain pushing. This isn’t proper.
In the lads’s professional golf world, the place a summer time’s value of unsettling selections and motion has concluded with two distinct sides — LIV Golf vs. the PGA Tour — the world-ranking debate stays as unsure as ever. It is true that a number of the finest golfers on the earth are taking part in tournaments every month for no world rating points, thus limiting which occasions — i.e., the majors — a few of these gamers can or can’t play in subsequent yr. Taken by itself, that final sentence is sufficient to enrage even informal golf followers. But it’s void of essential context.
The OWGR is a largely static group with strict guidelines, few changes and a overview course of that takes greater than a yr for new excursions to earn points. Those are the principles — we don’t make them, we simply remind you of them. So, this week’s “strategic alliance” introduced between LIV Golf and the MENA Tour, a hasty try to barnstorm the rating system, put the OWGR in a troublesome spot. The MENA Tour has routinely held 54-hole occasions that the OWGR has accepted. Why not settle for LIV Golf’s Thailand Invitational?
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Not so quick, the OWGR mentioned. It is reviewing the submission from the MENA Tour and can decide sooner or later.
Naturally, the MENA Tour’s commissioner, David Spencer, was none too joyful in regards to the OWGR’s response. Spencer launched a press release Thursday evening, simply hours earlier than the LIV occasion in Bangkok acquired underway.
“We have had various communications with OWGR since submitting our 2022/23 schedule, MENA Tour handbook, exemption criteria and our field ahead of our opening event of our new season which tees off today,” Spencer wrote. “None of this communication pointed in direction of any technical cause for the LIV Golf Invitational Bangkok to be handled any in a different way to any MENA Tour occasion, each one in every of which has obtained OWGR since we had been accepted into the OWGR framework in 2016.
“We have followed the OWGR Guidelines for our 2022/23 Season. Recently, there has been much talk in the golf world about limited field tournaments and 54-hole tournaments. For absolute clarity, the OWGR itself defines a limited field tournament as a tournament which has less than 30 qualified players. Furthermore, the MENA Tour has always had the OWGR’s blessing to stage 54-hole tournaments.”
You can learn the whole assertion within the tweet under:
Spencer went on to quote the OWGR’s major targets, as outlined on its web site, and declare that he believes his tour is doing all the things it might to earn points because it has achieved because it started incomes points in 2016. Will that be sufficient throughout this contentious time when gamers are suing media, and leagues are suing different leagues? It’s not implausible that the OWGR might additionally discover itself entangled in a lawsuit as effectively. Meantime, Spencer famous that the MENA Tour will as soon as once more work to realize points for subsequent week’s LIV Golf Invitational held in Saudi Arabia, however endurance is clearly working skinny.
LIV professionals have been requested repeatedly about this concern, which, to be clear, is one in every of their very own creation. Next week’s occasion is the ultimate particular person event throughout this LIV Golf season earlier than a three-month offseason. LIV professionals who haven’t earned points just lately would stand to drop even additional down the rating this fall, or be compelled to play on the DP World Tour to bolster their spot. Brooks Koepka, for one, is bored with ready.
“I don’t think it really was much of a response,” Koepka mentioned Friday of the OWGR. “I simply hate once you sit on the fence. Just decide a aspect. If it’s sure or no, simply decide one. So I’m not a giant fan of that.
“Yeah, not to say something to where it’s not really an answer and we’ll think about it. I don’t agree with — just pick a side. If it’s yes, if it’s no, it’s fine, we’ll figure it out from there.”
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