Thanks to LIV Golf’s inability to offer Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) points, its players have had to seek opportunities to do so elsewhere.
While the likes of Lee Westwood and Patrick Reed have turned to both the Asian Tour and DP World Tour to accumulate points in recent months, another LIV Golf player, Carlos Ortiz, took part in the V Copa Prissa on a circuit more recently granted OWGR eligibility – the Gira De Golf Professional Mexicana (GGPM).
Ortiz will not be regretting his decision to play in his homeland either, after he won the tournament by two shots over Isidro Benitez to claim just over 1.8 points. That ensured a jump up the world rankings of 11 places from World No.275 to World No.264.
The GGPM was only granted world ranking points status at the start of the year, having been formed in 2017. Like LIV Golf, its tournaments are played over 54 holes, albeit with a cut after the first two rounds.
Like many other LIV Golf players, Ortiz’s world ranking has plummeted since signing for it. As he competed in his first tournament last year in Portland, Oregon, Ortiz was ranked World No.119. However, before his win at the weekend, opportunities to arrest the slide since then had been limited to just two Asian Tour events – February’s Saudi International, where he missed the cut and so failed to accumulate points, and a tie for 43rd in the International Series Oman the week after, which yielded just 0.35 points.
While the GGPM offers another chance for Ortiz to move back up the world rankings, he still has some way to go to recover his career high of World No.44, which he achieved in February 2021. The circuit also offers considerably slimmer pickings than the options available to Ortiz had he remained with the PGA Tour, where he has won once.
In contrast to the number of points Ortiz claimed for his victory at the weekend, the winner of the PGA Tour’s Arnold Palmer Invitational, Kurt Kitayama, amassed over 67 OWGR points after edging out Rory McIlroy and Harris English at Bay Hill. Meanwhile, even a tie for 39th in that tournament, which was shared by 14 players including World No.1 Jon Rahm, handed them more points than Ortiz for his win, demonstrating how much more difficult his efforts to gain OWGR points are nowadays.
