On today’s show, Ryan goes over LIV withdrawing its application for OWGR recognition and what should happen from here. Also, he makes a plea to the PGA Tour to expand the fields (and have a cut) for the Signature events.
Welcome to the two of the 1st it’s March 5th 2024 I’m Ryan bie thanks for being here today uh we’ve got plenty to talk about primarily it’s a kind of semantics type show uh we’ve kind of been wonky about this uh subject matter for the last couple of years but this is a
Subject matter that I I think is worth getting into one last time before we kind of wrap this thing up because this part of the live PGA Tour Saga uh live Saga even unto itself ends here today seemingly and that is with the withdrawal of the application from Liv
Golf to be recognized by the official World Golf Ranking Sports Illustrated Bob herck who has uh has covered live golf pretty extensively over the last couple of years he was the first to report this and the withdrawal was made on Tuesday apparently it was probably made on Monday but announced on
Tuesday and Greg Norman who is the CEO and Commissioner of Liv golf wrote a letter to the players on live golf and probably some officials as well explaining the decision to withdraw their application so for all practical terms this means Liv golf doesn’t want owgr recognition anymore they don’t want
To pursue it they aren’t going to get it and they could reapply they they can do that they can come back and say all right well we’ve changed your mind here’s our new application here’s what we’d like to do differently to get recognition please and thank you however withdrawing it means there’s no
More debate about there’s no oh you can’t use it as a crutch in your broadcast like they have for two of the three tournaments primarily the ones walking Neiman’s won they can’t go and say well how how are you not ranked the world ranking how are you not higher in
The world ranking well they they’re giv up on that uh seemingly and I think part of that has to do with the reality that waen Neiman’s been invited to two major championships he got invited to the Masters and then yesterday came out that the PGA of America would invite him to the PGA
Championship now the Masters when they explained their invitation to him and torbjorn Olson and I I forget the third person I’m sorry but the explanation specifically around Neiman was for his winning the Australian Open and by winning the Australian Open Neeman also got into the Open Championship so
He’s in three Majors next year or this year I should say and a lot of that seems to have come off of that victory in the Australian Open the PGA Championship giving him that invitation really seems to be predicated on not on the Australian Open but winning the two live golf tournaments
Out of the first three they’ve got another one this week and the major championships effectively saying look we don’t need the owgr to recognize your players to know which ones are playing well it this isn’t it’s not how it works like there’s you can see who wins tournaments you can
See who finishes highly you can see who gains Strokes on their peers in their tour where they play Neiman has played well outside of Liv so even if you want to say the Liv golf tournaments are meaningless completely meaningless you’d still have to say Neeman is playing well
Because he won the Australian Open he’s played well in the Asian tour events that I’ve seen him play I mean the it’s it’s there like it’s it’s there to see and there it is like he’s playing well you you cannot deny that and I don’t think anyone’s trying to so taking all
That into account you go okay give him a spot in the majors well that eliminates frankly some of the usefulness of the owgr as a crutch right because the Masters to a degree without saying they’re recognizing live have recognized live and the PGA of America without necessarily being so explicit about it
Has recognized live at least if you’re good enough to destroy the 10-man tour then you probably should get an invite to a major because if you’re going to invite players based on being in the the top 100 in the world and they can’t get ranking well I I mean I’m pretty sure I
Could easily argue why Keen Demon’s in the top 100 in the world I don’t need the o odg to tell me that so now that’s not a useful crutch it’s just not so it makes sense for them to withdraw the application and go okay well here we are
We’ve got a 54 person League we’ve got 13 teams we’ve got two players who don’t compete with any team we’ve got a 12 event regular season we’ve got a team championship we’ve got an individual championship this is our chance to prove through this format that we are worthy of additional
Invitations to Majors part of the problem though with Liv is that their best players are the ones who most recently won Majors they’re in the majors as it is there’s like a 10 to a dozen guys who are going to be in the Masters because they have a bunch of
Prior Champions they went out of their way to get prior major Champions which was the smart thing to do with the enormous amount of money that they spent right so a lot of them already have births into the Masters or the PJ Championship or the open like in the
Case of Henrik Stenson he gets to play till he’s 60 he’s always going to be in there he’s always going to be in a major for cam Smith when he won the open he guaranteed himself opportunities to play in the majors for five years running and
He’s going to be in the open until he’s 60 Brooks Kea has won the PGA Championship last year he’s won the US Open he’s got running exemptions into the majors for five years he’s good Dustin Johnson he’s won the US Open and the Masters won the Masters in 2020 so he’s
Got one additional year left on his 5-year exemption for winning that he gets to go to the Masters for the rest of his life and he gets to play in the US Open really through 2026 because he won in 2016 so he gets a 10 year for
That and then the open and the PGA you get you know your five years Sergio Garcia Masters champion playing better I mean he’s not I don’t think he’s a very good player right week to week right I mean maybe he’s top 150 in the world so top
100 in the world perhaps all right well if they decide they want to invite them they’ll they’ll invite them if not then they won’t but the problem with the official World Golf Ranking at this point for Liv is two things one it’s no longer a useful foil but two even if
Today before the application have been withdrawn the owgr went to Norman and live and said okay we give you points now sounds good thanks for doing that thanks for thanks for waiting it out for us 19 months into it right then almost 20 months then you go
And say okay well how many points do we get per tournament oh about 22 23 24 25 something like that and you’re going to get basically the same amount of points within plus or minus two every week all year long and oh by the way because your players don’t play at least 20
Tournaments per year many of them then they are subject to the artificial denominator basically it’s a penalty you’re you are expected to play 20 tournaments per year so the minimum divisor is 40 so if you don’t play 20 tournaments per year you get docked because you get extra tournaments
Added to your tournament tally so you got to play at least 20 times well where are you going to play those that means you got to go play Asian tour events well Asian tour events only get like 15 16 points to the winner maybe 18 19 so
They’re worse than live and if you don’t do well then you get an extra tournament and you get almost no points it’s not even worth it so there’s there’s really no in and we’ve talked about this for the better part of a year maybe even longer where at this point in the game
And this was like six months into it it didn’t make any sense to continue this application because so many of the players had earned zero points for so long that they would fall precipitously and even if they signed new fresh players those players would not be able to sustain the tournament ranking for
Live to give enough points to help everybody out it it wouldn’t even the math wouldn’t even make sense been beating that drum for a while wrote an article about it a year ago at least and here we are you know or maybe not a year ago but it it’s been a while it’s
Probably been more than a year so they have finally come to the realization that they’ve waited it’s been too long it’s been 20 months you’re not even if you got points now it would never get you back to where you were unless you win the majors the only things that
Could help live golfers is that all of the Live players who could get into Majors basically finished in the top 10 all of them they had to be great and that could bring up the point value of each tournament otherwise it’s the same every week all the players who stink
With get no points their ranking would go down so they would mean less and ultimately it would all hurt live because the owgr is not built to handle the same 54 players competing every single week and we’ve talked about that which is why the owgr said hey we can’t
Have you in the system because we’re not built to handle that we can handle 54 whole events we can handle no cut we can handle limited fields we got all that we can come up with ways to handle that what we can’t handle is that you play
Against the same players all the time because you have strokes gained world ranking well if you play the same players all the time that’s always zero it always Nets out so there’s nothing to do and then you have really no relevant system of promotion and relegation you
Have four players you have three you get in through your promotions tournament which by the way is more or less a lottery system because it’s not a 72 hole tournament it’s two 18ho tournaments and a 36hole tournament and then you have one spot for the order of Merit on the international series that
Makes sense that that’s fine why why not why not three spots or four spots keep people coming in out so effective you have four people who come in and out of the league when it was 48 players that’s a little less than 10% when it’s 54 players that’s definitely less than 10%
It’s more like 8% turnover every year and the rest are determined by contracts that have no basis on Merit because Anthony Kim’s in the league and they’re all based on whether they’re willing to sign and you want them there’s no performance criteria so there you go and
You also can’t relegate players who have contract s that run beyond the current season because you have to keep them in the league so your guys like Lee Westwood and and Ian polter who are not playing well and have not really played well ever on Liv they can keep going
Because they’re captains of teams they’ve signed deals and this was all all known none of none of this was particularly complex this was known for a long time by live but they have tried to use this as a drum beat for a while and eventually people get numb to it and understand why
If they want to understand or otherwise just go look just just play if there are ways into Majors other than the first two right you can qualify for the US Open you can qualify for the Open Championship Open Championship qualifying is extremely difficult even harder than the US Open in my opinion
Because there are so few spots but you also have an open qualifying series they make it pretty easy go play in a tournament where there’s an open qualifying series event finish in the top three or top four whatever it needs to be top two you’re in the open you can
Be a live player and do that have a great time but the owgr just isn’t going to give him points because the system just isn’t compatible so them withdrawing it really kind of puts end to a chapter of this kind of long haul fight now Norman said there needs to be
A neutral ranking well they’ve touted a bunch of different supposed neutral rankings the Sports Illustrated one which is not neutral because La golf sponsors Bryson Des Shambo and Dustin Johnson so they’re not neutral and it was designed to be over a one-year time frame which is a horrible way of
Measuring golf in my opinion and the universal Golf Ranking which is more like the Sagarin ranking but with some extra stuff thrown in is definitely not good either so if you want to come up with your own system and this is what I’ve said from the beginning Le should come up with
Their own system come up with their own way of ranking their own players and not just based on their points of they earn use some actual data don’t just tell me oh well they finished 1st 2nd 8th and 20th they’re you know their average finishes whatever they’re the
Best no you got to you got to explain to me in data terms I think and they’ve never done that because they don’t they don’t do that they don’t have shot link yet they’re getting there that is coming and I think that their best argument is to try to use data but
It is hard to contextualize a lot of the players don’t live as we’ve talked about because most of them are irrelevant again this is a 10 to 12 man tour I think it’s a 10 man tour depending on how you feel about at 12 but it’s really a 10 person tour
So how do you compare that how do you compare that to the any other tour how do you compare that to the PGA Tour the DP World Tour it’s hard to do I admit but that’s the best option that you have and and then you can make the
Case to the governing bodies for the major championships that top two top three top four whatever players from live can be invited to Majors based on their performance and if you do that I think that’s your best argument otherwise just forget it and hope now all this comes as we were
Talking about the rumor mongering yesterday of live potentially walking away in the public investment fund of Saudi Arabia walking away from the negot ation with the PGA Tour so if all of that happens and let’s just kind of we know the owgr thing happened we don’t know about the
Negotiation thing right but let’s say it all kind of falls apart just for argument sake I think there’s some things here that’s a some Fallout from Liv one because a lot of players were told that they were going to get world ranking points eventually might not have
Been right away but they were going to get them when they sign with live so that’s not happening so that’s got to make a number of players upset especially the ones who don’t have easy access to at least one major because if you have access to one major you have a
Chance of finishing high enough in one that you get into the others or that you earn enough owgr points from that alone that you might get into the others you know things like that if you’re not one of those players you don’t have that chance and you got
To be fuming mad about that like the you got to be mad about that that you were sold that you signed on to that yeah you got compensated for it but now it’s definitely not happening so you got you got to have some subset of players who are like what the
Heck yeah I got paid but now I can’t ever play in a major again unless I go on some miraculous run in my career you know it that’s not great and at the same time I think if there if Liv is going to try to be truly insular and try to go this
Alone then what is the next step for the live format why are they still playing individual tournaments that that would be my next question because the differentiating factor on live whatever you think of it is having team competition and the team competition is one of the biggest Hang-Ups top three Hang-Ups from the
Owgr perspective of getting points so but it’s also the thing that yasar alayan believes will unlock tremendous amounts of value hasn’t yet probably never will that’s my view but he may be right and you always kind of have to hold that out there so if that’s their
Belief and they really want to go in on the team golf thing scrap the individual stuff have $25 million purses award money to the top five teams or something I’m just making this stuff up five teams six teams the winning team gets you know $7 million and they split it and the the
Second place team gets three and you know go down the line I don’t know I I have to do that math in my head but lean into that go do that at least that’s something different and you still get to watch those guys play golf you could still say
Oh well watch John Ramen Legion 13 take on Brooks kka and the smash you know in Hong Kong this week okay that’s what you should lean into forget the individual stuff because people understand golf is an individual sport because it almost always is at a professional level if you want to try to
Change things up make it a team thing like all teams like no individual standings no oh here’s a sideshow $5 million pot for the team thing but you should absolutely care about the teams flip the script have an individual have the $20 million be the team thing
Have $5 million be the individual thing you win the individual competition you get a million do you win the team thing you get a whole lot more than that though maybe you do that I I think that should have been the from the get-go how it went but here we are
Now uh we don’t have any ratings data so if you care about that kind of thing I don’t have anything to add there uh we probably will get all the data that we need for Sunday today U and frankly that doesn’t doesn’t mean as much um but
What I I do want to talk about in kind of the second portion of this is what happens now with the PGA Tour Signature Events we have 69 players in the field this week at the API they expanded the field for the Puerto Rico open from 120
Prior years to 132 so they added 12 players because there were fewer players who could potentially get into API it used to be you know 120 and 120 well no it doesn’t quite work out that way way so youve got 69 players in the field this week they’re not even attempting to
Kind of back fill the field to 72 78 even though they have said that was kind of their their target was 70 to 80 players and I think that’s a big mistake I I think you need to have at least 78 players in the field ideally I would
Want to look at 90 players in the field I think that’s a nice round number you can send them off in twos or threes yeah have a cut to the top 50 60 out of care you make it a quote unquote cut I mean better than like the top 50 and within
10 shots of the Genesis open but have 90 players in the field pay to the top 60 and or top 50 whatever you want to skew the the pay table a little bit but have a legitimate cut you cut half the field and if you get cut you get $10,000 or
$20,000 whatever it is and that way you still get paid for showing up there’s still a cut it still feels like something’s happening here that’s more like a golf tournament you see week to week because 69 players just is you’re I mean you’re only 15 away from Liv at that point and
I don’t think that’s what you want I don’t I don’t think that’s a good thing especially given the year that we’ve had so far we have five first-time winners right now so far in in the year where what 10 11 events in so half the events have been won by somebody who’s never
Won before and as this season goes along that’s only going to increase this is the year of new players new firsttime winners year of stars and and that could totally turn on a dime but the more likely outcome is you have like a dozen first-time winners this year out of 37
38 tournaments and those are the ones that aren’t even Oppo field events those aren’t the ones that are in the playoffs where you’re obviously almost certainly not going to have first time winners I me you could but it’s pretty unlikely so why not lean into that a
Little bit more invite the players who are doing well now invite the players who are not in the top 10 or top five of the Swing expand that make it the top 10 of the Swing make it the top 15 in the standings something along those lines I
I think the idea of trying to invite the top 10 players from the season that aren’t otherwise qualified if you can just back that out you know expand that just a little bit make make it the top 25 I you got to have more bodies in the field than this
It’s just it it’s not enough to sustain a full day of golf and the live model is hey we do a shotgun start we’re done in four and a half hours yeah that’s true the PGA Tour model is we’re going to send everyone out there in order off of
One and 10 or just one twos and threes but as a an attendee as a a patron of the tournament if you go for the full day you can go go from 7:30 in the morning to 7:30 at night kind of thing and you can’t really I mean you can you
Could space it out but I don’t think you’re getting as much action you’re not getting as much for your dollar doing it that way I I think that you need to have a little bit more depth meat to the field and you can do this not only in
Terms of the current year FedEx Cup why don’t you invite some corn fairy tour guys guys who are playing well in the corn fairy tour corn fairy tour top three get him into the field this week so something I you got to do something you can’t just do what you’re doing
Right now because it just feels too short it just feels too the fields are very strong I mean you’re going to get like 68 points to the winner this week of the Arnold Palmer Invitational and that’s despite the penalty for having a smaller field um that’s incredible it’s really
Incredible but you can you can have even more points if you invite more players go invite the current top five on the race to Dubai go invite the top three on the current Corner tour points list go invite the reshuffle top five you know the guys who graduated from who are in I
Know outside the top 125 go something just give me something to work with here because I I think they’re kind of not TW I mean it’s twisted in the wind a little bit because top players aren’t winning if if Scotty sheffler and Victor hin and Patrick Klay and Rory maoy had all won
Twice this year already everybody like oh I can’t wait this is great you a match up of guys who are crushing it this year well they’re not they’re not there yet and that can change but they’re not there yet so you’ve got these tournaments that are they’re not
Difficult to promote because you’ve got the stars but you go these are our stars and and the Skeptics go well they’re not winning yet this year so why should I watch watch them and then you go and talk about the the guys who have performed well outside of these events
You know and the regular events and they go okay well we don’t know them and they haven’t won much so why should we watch them well you’re going to have to lean into building star power because that that’s what you got to do when you lose
A dozen guys to live that’s what you got to do when your best players aren’t winning you got to talk about a narrative of creating new stars so use the Signature Events to take the new stars that have won new players that have won and invite them having a jake
Knp here this week is great A lot of people like Jake knp like what they saw from him really really cool for him to have that opportunity for any player is fantastic but for a guy who’s 10 11 starts into his PJ tour careers is great there just needs to be a little
Bit more filling out of these tournaments and I I hope that happens it’s not going to happen this year they’ve established the criteria so we’re not going to change anything but I hope it happens next year thinking how do we still make these things feel like a regular PJ Tour event
Even if we truncate the field 90 players top 60 and and ties make the weekend or top 55 something like that add more players give them the opportunity pay them for being in it that’s cool too I don’t think anyone mines a minor appearance fee for showing up and that’s
It and that I think that would make this so much better nevertheless we still got a really good tournament this week API I love the Puerto Rico open it’s a fun one I like Puerto Rico a lot got to play in this proam here like five years ago and it
Was it was a really cool tournament um so hopefully we get some interesting winners from the Puerto Ric we get interesting Puerto Rico Open winner and their life changes the last two winners haven’t really done a whole lot with it between Nico aaria and Ryan brem but sometimes that does mean something huge
Think about a Victor hlin kind of guy but we’ll see what happens this week we got plenty to get to through the rest of the week get a hold of me Ryan atth golfnet.com on Twitter threadx Instagram Blue Sky Ryan bengy I’m on Facebook which apparently is down while I’m
Recording this and on YouTube at Ryan Bing golf we’ll talk to you tomorrow on two of the 1st thanks so much for listening today
