[Photo] Francois Nel
The complaints from LIV Golf players (most notably Jon Rahm) and officials (most notably Scott O’Neil) upon getting the news last week that the fifth-year league was finally going to be eligible to receive Official World Golf Ranking points were surprising to many for one simple reason:
Wasn’t this what LIV wanted all along?
The source of Rahm and O’Neil’s frustrations stemmed from the fact that the number of points wasn’t what they had hoped for. The winner’s share in most weeks would be about the same as a player who won an alternate PGA Tour event. Additionally, LIV events would be ranked according to OWGR’s standard classification of “Small Field Tournaments,” with a “Ranking points distribution cutoff” applied to award points only to players who finish in the top 10 (and ties).
Related: Missing the point(s): Why the OWGR board didn’t go far enough with LIV Golf
“Yeah, it’s fantastic that we’re getting points,” Rahm said last week after the first round of the first LIV event of the 2026 season, LIV Riyadh. “It’s fantastic that we’re being recognised in a way. With that said, I don’t like how we’re not being treated the same as every other tour. It seems like the rules that have been in place aren’t really applied to us, with only 10 of us getting points; it doesn’t seem fair. There are small fields out there throughout the course of the year that get full points, or full players get points, right? So, there’s work to be done.”
OWGR officials explained that the decision to treat LIV events in this manner was based in part because LIV fell short of several standards for a tour to earn OWGR points, including the “self-selection of players, many of whom being recruited rather than earning their place on the tour, and, in recent days, the addition/removal of players to/from teams based on their nationality rather than for meritocratic reasons.”
Considering, however, LIV officials had failed in their previous attempt to get OWGR points, something is probably better than nothing.
“I might be one of the few that like it,” said LIV Golf veteran Peter Uihlein before teeing it up in Saudi Arabia. “We have more world ranking points today than we did yesterday.
“I saw the winner gets 23 points this week. In Qatar, he gets 20. In my mind, we’re the second-best tour in the world right now. Obviously, there are things that probably need to get worked out with the top 10 or whatever, but the reality is we have more points today than we did yesterday. I’m all for it.”
Perhaps more LIV members might take this point of view after seeing what happened to the players who finished in the top 10 in LIV’s season-opening event.
Here’s a breakdown of each player from the final leaderboard in Riyadh and how they moved in the OWGR after their performance:
1: Elvis Smylie: 134 to 77
2: Jon Rahm: 97 to 67
3: Peter Uihlein: 199 to 154
T-4: Abraham Ancer: 616 to 449
T-4: David Puig: 95 to 87
T-4: Thomas Pieters: 564 to 419
7: Thomas Detry: 62 to 63
8: Sebastian Munoz: 767 to 566
T-9: Ben An: 111 to 107
T-9: Branden Grace: 463 to 401
T-9: Lucas Herbert: 257 to 223
Indeed, Uihlein proved almost prophetic in the fact that his finish allowed him to make an impressive jump in the OWGR that he would not have been able to afford previously. And consider that the LIV winner, Elvis Smylie, made a big leap to 77th after earning 22.9869 points. It’s the first time the 23-year-old Australian has been ranked in the top 100 in the OWGR, and it puts him in shouting distance of the top 50 mark that could qualify him for the Masters as well as the top 60 mark that would get him into the U.S. Open.
By way of comparison, WM Phoenix Open winner Chris Gotterup earned 58.0923, and Patrick Reed earned 20.83184 for his DP World Tour win at the Qatar Masters. Another way to look at it, too, as noted by the Golf Channel, is the fact that the T-9 LIV finish earned from An, Grace and Herbert earned them 2.75842 points, while the seven-way tie for 28th at the PGA Tour’s WM Phoenix Open got players 2.56436.
Long story short: As LIV prepares to play again this week in Australia for the most celebrated event on its schedule, the incentive for players to do well goes beyond just the large prize money payouts. Better something than nothing.
