Why It's Time For The World Rankings And Majors To Recognise LIV Golf

There were two 54-hole events in the elite men's game this weekend featuring stacked fields of Major winners and household names.

Two great champions. A total of $7.6m won between them. Yet only one of the winners got world ranking points.

Joaquin Niemann's maiden LIV Golf win and Wyndham Clark's weather-shortened Pebble Beach Pro-Am victory sparked golf's world ranking debate back into full force as a tangled professional game once again showed how confused it is.

The Chilean overcame Masters champion Jon Rahm down the stretch and then another Masters winner in Sergio Garcia over a playoff. The recent Australian Open winner, who was also 5th at the Australian PGA Championship and then T4th at the Dubai Desert Classic, is arguably one of the most in-form players in world golf right now. His last four results read: 5-1-T4-1.

He shot 59 on Friday in LIV's opening round of 2024 and managed to do enough over the next two days to get over the line. He actually dropped from 66th to 74th in the world, while ironically Wyndham Clark moves to a career-high 6th after winning full ranking points for his triumph over 54 holes at Pebble Beach.

The US Open champion also shot a round of 12-under-par this weekend, carding a 60 in round three to break the course record, and he walked away with a huge 71.8 world ranking points.

Clark turned down LIV Golf over the winter and was very frank on why he said no. His reasoning was to continue climbing the world rankings to become the best in the world, saying he chose his legacy over LIV.

Niemann, on the other hand, spoke of his frustrations of not being in the Majors. 

"Joaquin, you're one of the best players in the world, we expected you to win earlier," LIV Golf's Dom Boulet said in the aftermath of his playoff win over Garcia.

"But I'm not in the Majors," Niemann was quick to reply.

Every LIV golfer knew what they were signing up to. They might have hoped that LIV would have secured points by now but certainly when they went over they knew their world ranking and Major status could have been in doubt.

It's why Dustin Johnson isn't even ranked inside the world's top 200 right now, but luckily for DJ he is still in all of the Majors thanks to his 2020 Masters victory.

Niemann isn't, and there are plenty of other examples of lowly world rankings and players missing out on Majors. Talor Gooch won three times last year and sealed the $18m LIV Golf individual title, where he came out on top over the course of a season against the likes of Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith and Bryson DeChambeau. How many Majors is he in this year? None. What's his world ranking? 394th!

Yes, the LIV players knew what they were signing up for but the world ranking system has now reached the point where it isn't doing the job that it's intended to - which is rank who the world's best golfers are. In fact, it hasn't been doing that for some time now but it feels like we've reached a point where something has to be done.

Talor Gooch isn't the 394th best player in the world. Niemann isn't the 74th. Dustin Johnson isn't the 218th best and Bryson DeChambeau, who shot 58 last Fall and won twice in a row, isn't the 166th best player in the world.

Sergio Garcia's another one who knew what he was signing up for and has seen huge consequences. He earned $47m according to Forbes in the 2022-2023 year but that has come at a cost. His 23-year spell inside the world's top 100 ended in late 2022 and the Spaniard then missed his first Open in 25 years in 2023. He's now down to 575th in the world rankings, by the way, just below the player who finished 162nd on the Korn Ferry Tour last year and had earnings of $24,000.

Whether a deal happens or not between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, the Majors are edging closer and closer to the point where they need to offer LIV an olive branch or the OWGR needs a serious u-turn.

The argument that LIV Golf has weak fields just isn't valid anymore. The leaderboard on Sunday saw the likes of Niemann, Jon Rahm, Sergio Garcia, Dustin Johnson and Dean Burmester, who won twice on the DP World Tour recently, battling it out. They were just ahead of Tyrrell Hatton, Louis Oosthuizen and Cameron Smith, too.

Whether the Majors can start inviting all LIV tournament winners into their great championships or give spots to the top-10 finishers on the season-long points list, that will go some way to making a real difference. 

The likes of Niemann and Gooch deserve to be playing in the four blue chip events in the calendar. And it would be nice for the golf fan to actually be able to see who the best players in the world are in a uniform ranking system.

The Majors boast the best fields in golf, but as things stand, there's some good players simply not eligible and that's not good for the fans who pay the money to tune in to watch the best vs the best.