PGA Tour legend disagrees with Rory McIlroy's OWGR position on LIV Golf

Davis Love III agrees with Jon Rahm, but thinks the world rankings must be scrapped for good.

Andy Roberts's picture
Thu, 17 Nov 2022
PGA Tour legend breaks ranks and goes against Rory's position on LIV OWGR stance

PGA Tour legend Davis Love III believes professional golf needs to scrap the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR) in order to solve the current issues facing the sport following the emergence of LIV Golf.

The OWGR, which continues to shut out the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Tour from receiving any world golf rankings due to them not yet filling certain criteria, has been in operation since 1986 and it continues to be used to rate the performance level of professional golfers around the world. 

Despite merging with the lower-tier MENA Tour in a bid to try and get on board the OWGR train, LIV Golf was stopped in its tracks (at least for now). 

Here's how the OWGR system works, if you want to get into the nuts and bolts of it all. 

According to the latest OWGR changes, the system claims "fields are evaluated based on the skill level of every player in the field, rather than just those in the field among the current top 200 of the ranking."

Former World No.1 Jon Rahm is having none of the revamp, especially when learning this week's distribution of points on the PGA Tour (38) vs DP World Tour (22). 

Rahm, now ranked fifth, went in hard on the current state of the world rankings, calling the situation "laughable" multiple times during his pre-tournament press conference at the DP World Tour Championship on Wednesday.

He considered it "laughable" as a result of seven players in the world's top 25 competing on the DP World Tour this week, as opposed to none in the RSM Classic over on the PGA Tour. 

Rahm's views were in stark contrast to those of current World No.1 Rory McIlroy on Tuesday, who spoke of his admiration for the recent changes. 

McIlroy was also laughing, but literally, at least at the current prospect facing LIV Golf right now. 

Elsewhere, one LIV Golf pro revealed his shock at the lack of ranking points available on the Asian Tour last week. 

So where does 21-time PGA Tour winner Love III (who was ranked inside the top 10 of the OWGR for 450 weeks despite never getting to No.1) stand on the current topic? 

Well, DL3 wants to get rid of them completely and return to how the professional game was played prior to 1986. 

Here's what Love III had to say to Jason Sobel and Michael Collins on SiriusXM's PGA Tour Radio show: 

"I got a question today that if I was commissioner for a day, what would you do, and this should have been my answer... I would just get rid of them [Official World Golf Rankings], who cares?!
"You win the FedEx Cup? You win the FedEx Cup. You win the DP World Tour Rankings? You win that. You can solve a lot of things in the golf world right now if you stop using world golf rankings, and went back to everybody's money lists. 
"You know Michael, I played when there were no world rankings. Fred [Couples] would be No.1 on the money list and maybe I could get to two.
"There was no world rankings. It solves a lot of issues for all of us if they kind of go away. But, it's a hard system to compare Jon Rahm to Scottie Scheffler who play on different tours, and meet on the US tour, it's just hard to do. It will never be perfect if you are trying to assimilate a ranking all away around the world. 
"It's just like you would get junior golf rankings, there's a whole bunch of different ones that all have different juniors on, you get college golf player rankings, there's a bunch of different rankings and they all have different guys at the top. Even some football and basketball polls, they don't always come out the same, so it's hard to do.
"I didn't see Jon's comments but whatever he said, I agree with him."

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