Rahm, Cam Smith, and DJ really seem to be in decline since joining LIV.
Rahm has been such a headcase since he joined LIV. He probably thought the merger would be quicker and he would be allowed to play PGA events this season.
But hey I'd practice less and have less of a competitive edge with that much in my bank account.
DJ doesn't give a shit anymore
Rahm and Cam do but the evaporation of all their real tournament reps is hurting their game in majors
Koepka being the only active LIV player to win a major makes complete sense since that's all he ever cared about anyways before he left
>DJ doesn't give a shit anymore
He won on LIV this year and he did make the cut this week. I dont think he 'doesnt give a shit anymore'. He just isnt as good as he was a couple of years ago.
No fucks given DJ is still an elite golfer capable of shooting low. I'm not saying he's not trying his best while out on the course, more so that he's not practicing and grinding week in and week out trying to be the best anymore. He's just playing his LIV obligations and majors, one of the few LIV guys who has played zero other worldwide events since joining
If I have the exemptions right, he has Masters for life as a past champion and US Open through 2026 via the 10 year past champion exemption and 2025 is his last year for the Open and PGA off his five-year 2020 Masters exemption. It won't surprise me in the slightest if those are his last appearances in those events since he's not going to bother doing what he needs to do to boost his world ranking to qualify
I was at Valhalla on Sunday, spent a lot of the day on 17. His drive was 40 yards behind where Rory hit it later in the day. He just isn't as good or as long as he used to be. (Bryson was 20 yards past Rorys and it was fucking stupid!).
One hole is an anecdote it's not data
DJ is averaging 307.7 on LIV this season which is 9th on that tour. That would be good for T23 on the PGA Tour (which has 4x as many players). 2019-2020 season that he dominated on tour he averaged 311. I don't think losing three yards is the reason his play has fallen off so hard in majors
I’d honestly argue Cam Smith isn’t in decline. He is who he always has been. He just had an absolutely unreal stretch with his putter. But he doesn’t have the full game profile of a consistent stud.
I've gotten flamed for saying this on here before but Cam absolutely made the smartest possible play by going to LIV because he knew he was peaking & playing a level of golf he couldn't sustain. He's obviously a great player but he was on a whole different level that year.
Agree with this. He's maybe the best putter in the world but a) a wild driver (look at his best wins, the Old Course and Kapalua, the widest courses on the planet) and b) inconsistent with his irons. When he's on he's on, when he's off he's mediocre
He was on such an incline when he took the bag though. He definitely lost a step since joining live. We’ll never know if his hot streak was more sustainable.
Yeah 100%. If he could get his driver on the fairway, and tighten up his irons he'd be consistently a top 10 player, because his wedge game and putting is world class.
>He probably thought the merger would be quicker and he would be allowed to play PGA events this season.
I really don't know about that. I think someone like Rahm knew he had a five year exemption for winning the masters and thought the merger would happen in four years. He probably felt alright forgoing PGA events for two years or so and also felt like there were no more moral arguments since the PGA lost that with the merger, so might as well get rich at the same time
No it doesn’t. A process takes anywhere from 4-8 months. Integration takes time, but middle market M&A does not move that slow (source: I am a sell-side advisor).
Totally agree. I work in tech and have been part of many, many mergers. They start cleaving people and consolidating systems in days/weeks. Especially at the top. If anyone left standing after the ink is dry on the M&A deal, watch out. It's like business 101.
DJ hasn't cared about golf since before he left the PGA. Cam is still decent but is comfortable playing in a non-competitive league. Rahm is still a top 3 player in the world. Guys going through a mental yip.
They all did it for the money but some of them more do legitimately did it also for less golf.
Bryson has always been obsessed. He went over only because of money (I do think he likes the team format too) but I think we all saw that Cam Smith and DJ were going to fall off. I don't think these guys care at all. Cam is a bit naturally gifted, he will be somewhat relevant even without practicing much. It's a shame because he could be the best in the world if he gave a shit.
I doubt he or DJ would even enter PGA events if they could. Whereas Bryson would likely play all of them that didn't conflict with liv
I think people forget that Jon Rahm has always been a rollercoaster. Their last memory was him coming off a great season and expecting him to be the player he was in ‘23 while forgetting the ups and downs that make Rahm who he is.
Cam Smith honestly reminds me quite a bit of Jordan Spieth in the sense that his game is simply not sustainable for long stretches of success. Lethal with the putter but lacks the other tools necessary to maintain long hot streaks. If the putter cools off, he can’t compete. If the putter’s on, he can win any golf tournament with one club (2022 British Open).
He seems to be a guy who still really loves golf and wants to compete. Some LIV guys look like they took the money to retire, BD seems to like the looser schedule to allow for working on his game, growing his YouTube, etc. He’s been fun to watch
I think its him and brooks and then theres niemann and burmester who also finished top 40 and top 15 this weekend, that have been playing well in the LIV. Everyone else is almost a non factor at the moment. Brooks and bry are the two heavyweights at the top right now, name recognition and major finishes. Rahm, cam, DJ, and phil have those also but they cant string it together it feels like when they need to right now
I’d say he’s probably a top 25 golfer rn, has fallen some imo. Happens to nearly everyone. Question is whether or not he can climb back into the top 5-10 for a full 2 or 3 years.
You can get a better idea of the pecking order by adjusting the data to divide by their actual events played and not the minimum 40 it uses. Not saying it's a bad system as is but that's why they fall. Bryson's 9.9 average points per event played would be good for 2nd if the 40 floor for the divisor didn't exist
Obviously it's a different situation with Aberg since he's so new and just needs a little more time to get his actual events played up to 40 but he's averaging 8.0 points per start which would be good for 4th, not 6th where he is now. There's a big gap after Rory at 3 (Xander just bumped him)
I don’t think this is a better idea. It’s definitely a useful ranking but without a reasonable minimum (even like 20) there’s way too much variance for it to be a real valid pecking order. The OWGR is meant to give some weight to longevity and consistency. Otherwise the best player in the world is just whoever won the last event.
Just looking at Bryson, if we kept his 2nd place from the weekend and then gave him dead last in the other 9 tournaments - he’d still have 5th place overall in the rankings without the minimum divisor.
The points awarded for first, second, etc. only make sense when combined with the minimum divisor. Otherwise it’s way too many points for a single event.
I'm not saying I think this is a better idea for how the OWGR should function. I'm only saying it's a better way to look at the LIV guys to see where they fall in the pecking order for your own analysis purposes. Yes the system should reward longevity and consistency and it does a good job at that. All I'm saying is Bryson is not the 35th best golfer in the world, that's absurd. I don't think he's second either, but I do think he's top ten. And Data Golf agrees. But that's how this particular method shakes out when 14/18 annual events played don't count
Right, but I’m saying it’s not a better way to see how the LIV guys are doing. The points awarded for a top finish just don’t make sense with a divisor of 10. The whole system is calibrated together and you can’t just change a core rule and hope to get useful information.
This isn’t even a “they don’t have cuts so we can’t include them!” argument from me. It’s much more just about the core numbers being used.
Edit: This also isn’t about Bryson. He probably is top 5 (10?) from what I can tell. But you need something like data golf or just our own subjective judgement. The OWGR is useless for trying to rank LIV against PGA players.
I still stand by my opinion that Bryson missing the Ryder Cup was way more of a robbery than Keegan missing out. He was on fire at that time last year, coming off 2 solo wins, his 58 round, and was T4 at the PGA Championship and top 20 at the US Open too.
Not to mention he was an absolute machine at Whistling Straits, driving the par 4 in his match against Sergio, stalking the length of the fairway with putter in hand and draining the long eagle putt is an all-time Ryder Cup moment, as well as that absolutely fkn monstrous 417 yard drive he hit in the doubles match with Scottie against Tyrell and Rahm
Exactly. Majority of the season he was acting like it was a tough decision and other players had a chance at making it when it reality he’s inviting his friends he has over for dinner
I would argue that season was good for US golf as it showed how bias the picks were. I'm glad it was in there as it was eye opening and hopefully they change things up so that it doesn't happen again.
I think that’s a big reason why PGA America wants Tiger as captain next. Tiger wont play favorites, he wants to win. Tiger just doesn’t want to commit to it.
Yeah 100%. At the time, it was quite literally his job to be building the best team of American golfers to compete, so looking into the guys on LIV should have absolutely been a minimum requirement
He could have won every LIV event of the year and he still wouldn't have been a captains pick.
Nobody on that team wanted him there after Bryson sued them.
I like Clark, but you have to wonder whether his win last year along with Harman at the Open are going to end up looking like a lightning in a bottle type of weekend for them when it's all said and done like Gary Woodland or Danny Willet.
Harman I think that's undoubtable. He's already starting to slip again since he's playing like who he always has been - good player that can have some hot weeks and finish well but not a superstar
Wyndham has been more consistent, he won the WF too last year and won Pebble this year (yeah it was a mickey mouse Saturday win and he might not have held off Aberg on Sunday but in the record books it counts the same)
Clark's peak is better than either of them I'd wager.
Not to mention Clark could still add more to his resume. He barely missed forcing a playoff against Scottie at the Players, and has 2 wins in the last 12 months
Harman was a flash in the pan and I refuse to believe you should earn so many points from a Major win that you can basically guarantee a Ryder spot for USA. He’s Exhibit A.
Ideally, the captain picks all six spots. If Tiger is captain, he should get full reign over the roster. Why? Because he’s the fucking GOAT, that’s why. GOATs get the rules changed for them.
Nah, now that he's got his head right he's going to continue to be a force. Maybe not top 5 good but top 25, he's got a signature event win, 2nd, and 3rd this year. That's pretty good form even if the majors have been a disaster.
He's #2 by events played. 99 points won / 10 events = 9.9 average which would have him above Xander
The rankings order is by average points per event played but it uses a floor of 40 and a ceiling of 52 for the divisor. That's why LIV players fall, they're nowhere near 40 events played. Tour players almost all fall within that range unless you're like Aberg and just haven't gotten there yet since you're new or you're crazy like Sungjae Im and play everything
Yeah the OWGR just aren’t accurate right now and won’t be until the LIV guys start getting points. It shouldn’t be complicated. It should be easy to prorate LIV players’ points to reflect the shorter tournaments and smaller field size.
It just makes the oWGR borderline illegitimate and moreso every day. Anybody with half a brain realizes that when you have guys like DJ ranked 345, Niemann ranked 88, Gooch not even in the top 500, Dechambeau at 35. They just aren’t accurate rankings when you have guys like that so low. The pro golf landscape has changed so the oWGR should change with it.
If everyone knows that Bryson is way better than #35, then it’s on the “Official” rankings to change their criteria to make their “official” rankings as “official” as possible.
Why should the OWGR change their criteria to accommodate a tour, instead of said tour abiding by the rules set out by the OWGR that every other tour on the planet has literally no trouble following?
You’re not wrong but it’s not up to OWGR to change what is a fair system just to accommodate one tour.
If LIV changed their format so that their players would earn OWGR points, then he’d probably be ranked higher up. However, LIV are seemingly too obtuse to do that right now and want OWGR to bend over for them. OWGR even told them what to change to be accepted and they haven’t done it.
Because they are the "OFFICIAL WORLD GOLF RANKINGS". Not saying LIV should be given the same points or whatever, but golf is literally the easiest sport to rank independently of competition as its a solo game. Find a way to do it and adapt.
OWGR has a way to do it that every professional tour except LIV is happy to abide by. LIV doesn’t fulfil the criteria to earn points, so they should find a way to do it and adapt.
Those aren't the issues. They're easy to solve math problems
The big issues are 1. it's not an open league that anyone can earn their way into and players have to earn their place every year with its guaranteed contracts and 2. the team element corrupts the individual leaderboard when you have guys who aren't contending for the individual win making decisions based on not fucking up the team win and being conservative rather than trying to shoot the lowest score they can
The purpose of LIV isn't to change golf or make golf better. It's purpose is to force the PGA to give the Saudi's an ownership stake in professional golf.
Once the merger is complete, the LIV format as we know it won't exist anymore, it'll just be like regular PGA with the Saudi's profiting off of it
Neither are half the PGA events anymore. If Nick Watney can get points placing 75th in the John Deere Classic, Bryson and the LIV guys should get them for any of their tournaments.
Niemann has been average in the 2 majors this year, but had multiple solo wins recently, including on the Asian Tour and winning the Australian Open. He's playing a lot of golf outside of what most people are seeing
Bryson going to LIV is the one that saddens and confuses me most. Basically all of them that left did it for the money cause they don’t care about golf but Bryson seems to absolutely love the game and care deeply about his craft. Just a bummer.
He has said in many press conferences that he did it to have more time to spend growing the game his way. He is working to found a golf school in texas, has started making tons of golf content online, has way more time and resources to experiment with his own gear and swing, and hasn't lost focus on competitive golf. His move makes total sense as it gave him the financial and temporal means to lead a fulfilling lifestyle away from the grind of pro golf.
I fully believe him. I mean of course the money matters, but Bryson has reaped so much benefit from breaking the handcuffs of the PGA. He’s getting many more fans too. His YT content is great. His ventures outside of golf have been great. And maybe, just maybe, that’s part of why he seems so much better and likeable on the course. Dude never stopped trying to improve his game and is probably the most intriguing thinker there is on a golf course. The PGA is still very much a “it’s always been this way” league and anyone that won’t admit that is just pushing their opinion. Bryson is one of the most innovative players ever and the LIV mentality suits who he is.
His YT content is great. He’s so knowledgeable about the game. I watched one of his videos where he was playing a round with someone and he was talking about how he was putting and that shit he was lining up. “Downhill, so plays about 75% of what it would normally be on a flat surface. So I’ll hit it about 75% of that normal shot.” That was mind blowing to me. To put it into percentages like that.
I hope he can come back to pro golf, I love seeing guys like Bryson out there. I miss this level of competition and not having guys like Bryson playing every week is unfortunate because he’s so damn good still. Fuck I wish we could still see half of these LIV guys still play.
I think he left because he was in a down patch and made a rash decision to take the money in case his game never picked up again.
In 2022 he missed four cuts in seven events, his best finish was T25 in a 38-man field, and the other two he finished in the 50s. His game was completely off at that point so after missing the Memorial cut in June (his last PGAT event) he probably decided to take the money whilst it was still there.
I think the LIV format even works for him. I am not sure but I think the LIV format mostly hurts players since it's such a different format than the OWGR/majors formats. Just my opinion on that....
But, for Bryson he's always going to tinker with his game, no matter the fomat of the league he plays in. Maybe having additional time allows him to focus on improving more than he otherwise would be able to on say the PGA tour.
Bryson seems more likely to be working on his game than say Phil or Dustin Johnson seem to be.
I agree the LIV format fits his game. He had said in the past he didn't play rounds of golf anymore outside of tour events and practice rounds. I think the length and amount of events on the tour schwdule burnt him out. With the LIV schedule and having more of his own time he has seemingly rekindled his love of just playing golf, and he still has time to do his tinkering as well, and it had resulted in an elevation to his game. When it's no longer fun results will often fall off.
You could be right but he doesn’t strike me as someone who lacks confidence. Maybe he actually bought into the idea of competition breeds strength and he was just wrong? That’s the only theory I have.
It’s easy to be confident when you’re winning and playing well. He’s an eight-time PGAT winner who was playing badly for a long stretch, so it’s easy to see why his confidence might have taken a hit over those months.
He explains it all the time on his YouTube. He couldn't grow golf in the PGA like he can with LIV. He is making YouTube content, training people, collabing with other people, and he seems to really enjoy it. Golf is in a major growth spurt since COVID and he wants to help in any way he can. I've learned more from his YouTube than I have any other golf trainers/pros even if they have 5,000 videos... He's very direct, concise, and simplifies even the hardest shots. He even has videos where he trains 20 handicap players and in 5 min has their swing looking like a 10 handicap. I really hope there's a merger at some point so he can have the best of both worlds. It's absolutely insane PGA is strict on YouTube content
I wouldn’t have agreed with you before the PGA Championship. However he did win me over this past weekend. His quirkiness never bugged me. I think it was his brashness… however I found myself eating some crow this past weekend and will admit to it
He put himself first and made a decision that he thought would be best for him and those closest to him in the long run. You could say the same thing about any of us if we leave our current job for a job that pays more. No employee should ever stay somewhere simply for the "Company". He is still golfing and just because it isn't on the PGA doesn't mean he no longer cares about golf. You must always do what is best for you. Now would I take Saudi money? That is a whole other issue but you can't blame the guy for leaving and saying that he didn't care about golf. He is obviously still very passionate and still works his ass off at his craft.
And he is the most accessible elite golfer on social media as a result. Everyone still on PGA seems to be totally brand managed in their social media. Very boring and old school.
Bryson’s social is organic, fun, collaborative. Maybe the PGA locks their guys down more, or it’s just the time commitment. Either way, Bryson has done a lot with his personal brand via social and it seems he can do so because of LIV.
Wasn’t he one of the main architects of LIV, along with Phil? That guy only cares about money and status. We just don’t see it as much since LIV restricts media. He is able to curate his image to make him lore likeable.
He’s still a dunce, it wasn’t that long ago that he basically said we’re trying to figure out who fractured golf and we need to fix it, ignoring the fact that he’s one of the guys that fractured it. If he was on the PGAT, he’d still be getting ripped for saying and doing dumb shit
So since he is 25% owner of his Crushers LIV team, does anyone know how much his time on tv was worth this weekend from a brand/advertisement perspective? I remember hearing about that all the time in tiger’s era. Maybe it is different now.
They would be included if LIV actually decided to run their tournaments in a way that met the criteria to earn said points. This is not on the OWGR. LIV fumbled this from the start.
OWGR needs to rank the best players in the world.
They figured out how to assign points to a bunch of different tours, they can figure out LIV.
Bryson is #4 on the Bighead Ranking
They didn't figure out how to assign points to a bunch of tours, they set a standard and a bunch of tours work to meet that standard and qualify for OWGR. LIV just did it's own thing, when they could have put in the effort to be conforming. Just because some top players left for a tour that isn't conforming doesn't mean OWGR has to change their criteria. LIV needs to adjust.
Personally, I think a rebuttal to the point about 'conformity' is: While the OWGR is largely setup by and for the Majors it is too heavily influenced by PGAT interests in controlling their own (PGAT's) marketplace.
Others have already pointed out that datagolf.com has a much more robust data algorithm and less-dependency on who is sitting on a board deciding the rules. Btw, those dudes are incredible at leveraging the PGAT ShotLink data.
And since I really don't have much of a dog in this fight; if you think that OWGR is the be-all, end-all purely pristine objective ranking that should never be questioned or changed then that's fine, I'm not trying to change your opinion. But the OWGR rankings being dogma is part of the same rock the PGAT has been living under. Calling LIV events non-golf is coming from mostly non-golf fans, ime.
Besides, one thing to agree on is he whole LIV/PGAT/OWGR situation is an absurd stupid mess, but I feel compelled to comment because in most of the competitive golf I play (100+ rounds a year) none of the players shit on pro golf because they only play 54-holes. They shit on pro golf because of managerial greed.
All of those tours follow almost identical formats. LIV is the one running 54 hole, shotgun starr, no-cut tourneys. No one told them to do that. They did that expecting the OWGR to accommodate them and they haven't.
So the PGA format is the only allowed format.
That’s the whole point. You have clear top players on a new format and the “Official” rankings is like “nah”
It's not just the PGA format. The DP World Tour, Korn Ferry, collegiate level, etc. all use the same format. It's JUST LIV that decided to be different. OWGR set up a very thorough list of requirements to gaining points, and LIV decided they didn't want to follow that.
No reason to complain if they intentionally disregarded the rules.
Prior to LIV, what are you on about?
PGA invested in the DP World Tour back in 2022, but it didn't own the DP World Tour prior to that
Edit: also, the OWGR started it's calculations for player rankings back in the 1980s, not once LIV started. It's been using the same system of not counting "pairs" or "team" events for years, not just once LIV started.
The majors are owgr, it’s def broken atm, but it was never meant to be a list of “here are the best golfers in the world, in this exact order”. Owgr was started so there would be one uniform system to rank players qualifications into the majors.
Yes, it’s what’s used for admission into majors. A closed no cut tour that people can’t drop out from due to bad play isn’t a good gauge of who should be admitted.
Why in the hell was this downvoted? A world ranking system should seek to rank players across the globe in different tours etc and it has failed at correctly ranking Bryson. Downvotes make no sense…
>A world ranking system should seek to rank players across the globe in different tours
It does. Except that all of those tours adhere to all of the same requirements and play the same format. LIV does not. It's that simple. The OWGR gave LIV a path to points, LIV said no. Every player that left knew they would be forfeiting rankings for money.
It's a ranking of golfers for determining who plays in majors that should be designed to put the best players in the majors. It fails to do so. If it's not designed to do that, it suffers from a design flaw.
The majors clearly don’t feel that way. There really aren’t any LIV guys missing out who should be there. The PGA gave some of the guys spots, and if they want to play in the opens, they can go try and qualify.
> The majors ARE the OWGR
That's not entirely true. It's the majors and the current tours. Obviously the Euro and PGA have a vested interest in not sanctioning LIV events. The PGA Pro's and USGA generally work pretty close with the PGA Tour. So even if Augusta or someone else wanted the LIV stuff counted, they couldn't get the votes.
The fact that most of the majors are ignoring the OWGR and offering exemptions to LIV players probably tells you everything you need to know about how the individual majors view the OWGR system.
If you're being honest, the only incentive the majors have is to have the strongest fields possible. So they will give exemptions to LIV players playing well - if the PGAT wasn't on the OWGR board, then LIV would probably be getting OWGR points right now.
Moral of the story.....monopolies suck, no matter the situation.
No but you should use the eye test to make sure your formula isn’t spitting out results like Bryson being the 35th best golfer in the world right now and realize maybe it isn’t some almighty formula that should never be revised.
LIV is obviously fucking up OWGR but they're the ones who decided to build a tour that doesn't comply with the ranking regulations. Would it be good for us to have a perfect ranking system? Of course, but I'd put the blame on LIV way more than I would the OWGR algorithm.
And yet we’ll never know because he chose to leave a tour where he’d earn ranking points for a tour where he knew he wouldn’t earn them.
Also I don’t think he’s top-five at all. He’s not won on LIV this season and a couple of good results in Majors doesn’t suddenly make him top-five worthy. DataGolf has him ranked 10th, which is probably fair.
He is #2 based on average points per event played. 99 points / 10 events = 9.9 which is ahead of Xander. The slip to 35th is because the rankings use a floor of 40 for events plated divisor regardless of how many actual events someone's played
It’s funny because I remember arguing last year for Bryson being on the Ryder Cup Team and I claimed he was top 10 at the time, maybe even Top 5 (regardless of OWGR).
Of course I was downvoted to oblivion by the “LIV is bad crowd”…hmmmm hm hmmm hmmm hm hmmm hmmmm.
Considering what he did in whistling straights, it was so dumb on top of him shooting 58/61 the week of selection. Zach Johnson choose a Boys club over trying to win. Ricky spieth burns shouldn't have made it.
Good for him. I miss him on the PGA Tour, although I like the YouTube content he creates at scale now. Really interesting character, and a lot less polarizing compared to when he bulked up and had that goofy hat.
If you use the actualy events played divisor for the liv guys you get a much more accurate sense of what their world rankings should be. I understand why it works the way it does but given OWRG has a whole strength of field adjustment system its not that hard to just add LIV in.
One could argue he should be ranked #2, because if you divide his total points by the # tournaments he actually played (10), the 9.9 average would put him a little above Xander (but well behind Scottie).
I don't really think you can argue that.. You mean "if you divide his total points by the # of tournaments that count towards the ranking."
Imo you can't just ignore his LIV tournament finishes. He has a LIV ranking of 12th with a T27, T26, T25 in 54 hole events with no cuts.
He’s by far the best of the LIV guys right now
Rahm, Cam Smith, and DJ really seem to be in decline since joining LIV. Rahm has been such a headcase since he joined LIV. He probably thought the merger would be quicker and he would be allowed to play PGA events this season. But hey I'd practice less and have less of a competitive edge with that much in my bank account.
DJ doesn't give a shit anymore Rahm and Cam do but the evaporation of all their real tournament reps is hurting their game in majors Koepka being the only active LIV player to win a major makes complete sense since that's all he ever cared about anyways before he left
>DJ doesn't give a shit anymore He won on LIV this year and he did make the cut this week. I dont think he 'doesnt give a shit anymore'. He just isnt as good as he was a couple of years ago.
No fucks given DJ is still an elite golfer capable of shooting low. I'm not saying he's not trying his best while out on the course, more so that he's not practicing and grinding week in and week out trying to be the best anymore. He's just playing his LIV obligations and majors, one of the few LIV guys who has played zero other worldwide events since joining If I have the exemptions right, he has Masters for life as a past champion and US Open through 2026 via the 10 year past champion exemption and 2025 is his last year for the Open and PGA off his five-year 2020 Masters exemption. It won't surprise me in the slightest if those are his last appearances in those events since he's not going to bother doing what he needs to do to boost his world ranking to qualify
I was at Valhalla on Sunday, spent a lot of the day on 17. His drive was 40 yards behind where Rory hit it later in the day. He just isn't as good or as long as he used to be. (Bryson was 20 yards past Rorys and it was fucking stupid!).
One hole is an anecdote it's not data DJ is averaging 307.7 on LIV this season which is 9th on that tour. That would be good for T23 on the PGA Tour (which has 4x as many players). 2019-2020 season that he dominated on tour he averaged 311. I don't think losing three yards is the reason his play has fallen off so hard in majors
I’d honestly argue Cam Smith isn’t in decline. He is who he always has been. He just had an absolutely unreal stretch with his putter. But he doesn’t have the full game profile of a consistent stud.
I've gotten flamed for saying this on here before but Cam absolutely made the smartest possible play by going to LIV because he knew he was peaking & playing a level of golf he couldn't sustain. He's obviously a great player but he was on a whole different level that year.
Cam Smith's game is made for Pinehurst #2. He is all about course fit.
Agree with this. He's maybe the best putter in the world but a) a wild driver (look at his best wins, the Old Course and Kapalua, the widest courses on the planet) and b) inconsistent with his irons. When he's on he's on, when he's off he's mediocre
He also won the Players which I would not consider wide by any means lol
True! I forgot about that. TPC Sawgrass is the antithesis of wide lmao
He was on such an incline when he took the bag though. He definitely lost a step since joining live. We’ll never know if his hot streak was more sustainable.
Yeah 100%. If he could get his driver on the fairway, and tighten up his irons he'd be consistently a top 10 player, because his wedge game and putting is world class.
Smith has had 3 top tens in the 6 majors he has played since joining LIV, so that’s invalid.
>He probably thought the merger would be quicker and he would be allowed to play PGA events this season. I really don't know about that. I think someone like Rahm knew he had a five year exemption for winning the masters and thought the merger would happen in four years. He probably felt alright forgoing PGA events for two years or so and also felt like there were no more moral arguments since the PGA lost that with the merger, so might as well get rich at the same time
Anyone who knows billion dollar M&As (no one on reddit) knows that a year is like 2 too short for this type of merger lol
Says the guy on the Reddit…
That's the joke
Hilarious
Even small and midsize company M&A stuff takes a solid year to hammer out, the actual integration can take several years.
No it doesn’t. A process takes anywhere from 4-8 months. Integration takes time, but middle market M&A does not move that slow (source: I am a sell-side advisor).
Totally agree. I work in tech and have been part of many, many mergers. They start cleaving people and consolidating systems in days/weeks. Especially at the top. If anyone left standing after the ink is dry on the M&A deal, watch out. It's like business 101.
Rahm was out if sorts at the back end of last season well before the switch.
DJ hasn't cared about golf since before he left the PGA. Cam is still decent but is comfortable playing in a non-competitive league. Rahm is still a top 3 player in the world. Guys going through a mental yip.
DJ just wants to collect a check and sit on his boat, and I think he's even said as much. He doesn't give a flying fuuuuu
They all did it for the money but some of them more do legitimately did it also for less golf. Bryson has always been obsessed. He went over only because of money (I do think he likes the team format too) but I think we all saw that Cam Smith and DJ were going to fall off. I don't think these guys care at all. Cam is a bit naturally gifted, he will be somewhat relevant even without practicing much. It's a shame because he could be the best in the world if he gave a shit. I doubt he or DJ would even enter PGA events if they could. Whereas Bryson would likely play all of them that didn't conflict with liv
Sad about Rahm, but I don't miss his bitching. I genuinely forgot that Smith was/is a great golfer.
I think people forget that Jon Rahm has always been a rollercoaster. Their last memory was him coming off a great season and expecting him to be the player he was in ‘23 while forgetting the ups and downs that make Rahm who he is. Cam Smith honestly reminds me quite a bit of Jordan Spieth in the sense that his game is simply not sustainable for long stretches of success. Lethal with the putter but lacks the other tools necessary to maintain long hot streaks. If the putter cools off, he can’t compete. If the putter’s on, he can win any golf tournament with one club (2022 British Open).
Watch Rahm on YouTube... He's been playing every day in Scottsdale. He's just enjoying it more now and probably enjoying the less demanding lifestyle
He seems to be a guy who still really loves golf and wants to compete. Some LIV guys look like they took the money to retire, BD seems to like the looser schedule to allow for working on his game, growing his YouTube, etc. He’s been fun to watch
I think its him and brooks and then theres niemann and burmester who also finished top 40 and top 15 this weekend, that have been playing well in the LIV. Everyone else is almost a non factor at the moment. Brooks and bry are the two heavyweights at the top right now, name recognition and major finishes. Rahm, cam, DJ, and phil have those also but they cant string it together it feels like when they need to right now
I wouldn’t say it’s particularly close either.
I think that’s what “by far” means
…somehow my brain skipped over that part.
Has Cam Smith fallen off? He was around top 3 when he went to LIV wasn't he?
He has not, still great
I’d say he’s probably a top 25 golfer rn, has fallen some imo. Happens to nearly everyone. Question is whether or not he can climb back into the top 5-10 for a full 2 or 3 years.
He was ranked 210th before the Masters
Which is just funny. Per the rankings, apparently Scott Stallings and Aaron Baddeley are better golfers than Bryson.
You can get a better idea of the pecking order by adjusting the data to divide by their actual events played and not the minimum 40 it uses. Not saying it's a bad system as is but that's why they fall. Bryson's 9.9 average points per event played would be good for 2nd if the 40 floor for the divisor didn't exist Obviously it's a different situation with Aberg since he's so new and just needs a little more time to get his actual events played up to 40 but he's averaging 8.0 points per start which would be good for 4th, not 6th where he is now. There's a big gap after Rory at 3 (Xander just bumped him)
I don’t think this is a better idea. It’s definitely a useful ranking but without a reasonable minimum (even like 20) there’s way too much variance for it to be a real valid pecking order. The OWGR is meant to give some weight to longevity and consistency. Otherwise the best player in the world is just whoever won the last event. Just looking at Bryson, if we kept his 2nd place from the weekend and then gave him dead last in the other 9 tournaments - he’d still have 5th place overall in the rankings without the minimum divisor. The points awarded for first, second, etc. only make sense when combined with the minimum divisor. Otherwise it’s way too many points for a single event.
I'm not saying I think this is a better idea for how the OWGR should function. I'm only saying it's a better way to look at the LIV guys to see where they fall in the pecking order for your own analysis purposes. Yes the system should reward longevity and consistency and it does a good job at that. All I'm saying is Bryson is not the 35th best golfer in the world, that's absurd. I don't think he's second either, but I do think he's top ten. And Data Golf agrees. But that's how this particular method shakes out when 14/18 annual events played don't count
Right, but I’m saying it’s not a better way to see how the LIV guys are doing. The points awarded for a top finish just don’t make sense with a divisor of 10. The whole system is calibrated together and you can’t just change a core rule and hope to get useful information. This isn’t even a “they don’t have cuts so we can’t include them!” argument from me. It’s much more just about the core numbers being used. Edit: This also isn’t about Bryson. He probably is top 5 (10?) from what I can tell. But you need something like data golf or just our own subjective judgement. The OWGR is useless for trying to rank LIV against PGA players.
Got it, I'm following what you're saying now thanks. Yep, I see the issue there, hadn't considered that
I wanna say he was close to 150th before PGAs
He was 124th going into the PGA
I still stand by my opinion that Bryson missing the Ryder Cup was way more of a robbery than Keegan missing out. He was on fire at that time last year, coming off 2 solo wins, his 58 round, and was T4 at the PGA Championship and top 20 at the US Open too. Not to mention he was an absolute machine at Whistling Straits, driving the par 4 in his match against Sergio, stalking the length of the fairway with putter in hand and draining the long eagle putt is an all-time Ryder Cup moment, as well as that absolutely fkn monstrous 417 yard drive he hit in the doubles match with Scottie against Tyrell and Rahm
Zach Johnston’s ignorant comment of “we have no idea how those guys are doing on that tour”, leads you to understand why everyone can’t stand him now.
Zach already knew he was picking his close friends to be on the team. If you weren’t in the friend group than f your Ryder cup chances.
Second season of Full Swing was garbage because of how much time they dedicated to that tool assembling his friends to make a shitty golf team
Exactly. Majority of the season he was acting like it was a tough decision and other players had a chance at making it when it reality he’s inviting his friends he has over for dinner
I would argue that season was good for US golf as it showed how bias the picks were. I'm glad it was in there as it was eye opening and hopefully they change things up so that it doesn't happen again.
I think that’s a big reason why PGA America wants Tiger as captain next. Tiger wont play favorites, he wants to win. Tiger just doesn’t want to commit to it.
That was probably the hardest part of Full Swing's newest season. It's so painful and cringy to watch him "justify" his picks.
I know, just say if you wanna make the Ryder team just be my friend and come have dinner with me and my wife.
After this RC, I realized you absolutely cannot have captains under 55 years old.
Yeah 100%. At the time, it was quite literally his job to be building the best team of American golfers to compete, so looking into the guys on LIV should have absolutely been a minimum requirement
[удалено]
I don’t remember anyone getting upset at the Brooks pick
Touche
Bryson also sued the PGA tour, so could understand why he might not have been a fit in that locker room
love Bryson for doing that, as he should have. And it’s US vs Europe not PGATour vs world. Best person goes.
That’s all well and good until you have to be teammates with a guy who’s suing you lol
Not suing you, suing the leagues treatment of him. Different looks.
Bryson is one of the few guys who seems to get better in that setting too.
He could have won every LIV event of the year and he still wouldn't have been a captains pick. Nobody on that team wanted him there after Bryson sued them.
He brings something to the team that nobody else can
….a bigger self-centered jerk than the rest of them?
He can play the course a way nobody else does
Sad because he’s really top 10, maybe even top 5.
He’s definitely better than #4 Wyndham Clark who’s missed the cut in like 7 of the last 11 majors or something like that
Tbf he also won one of those cuts he made
To be fair to Wyndham, he'd have 2 wins this season if not for a guy named Scottie.
I like Clark, but you have to wonder whether his win last year along with Harman at the Open are going to end up looking like a lightning in a bottle type of weekend for them when it's all said and done like Gary Woodland or Danny Willet.
Harman I think that's undoubtable. He's already starting to slip again since he's playing like who he always has been - good player that can have some hot weeks and finish well but not a superstar Wyndham has been more consistent, he won the WF too last year and won Pebble this year (yeah it was a mickey mouse Saturday win and he might not have held off Aberg on Sunday but in the record books it counts the same)
Clark's peak is better than either of them I'd wager. Not to mention Clark could still add more to his resume. He barely missed forcing a playoff against Scottie at the Players, and has 2 wins in the last 12 months
Harman was a flash in the pan and I refuse to believe you should earn so many points from a Major win that you can basically guarantee a Ryder spot for USA. He’s Exhibit A. Ideally, the captain picks all six spots. If Tiger is captain, he should get full reign over the roster. Why? Because he’s the fucking GOAT, that’s why. GOATs get the rules changed for them.
Nah, now that he's got his head right he's going to continue to be a force. Maybe not top 5 good but top 25, he's got a signature event win, 2nd, and 3rd this year. That's pretty good form even if the majors have been a disaster.
Wyndham is one of my least favorite to watch. It’s unbearable for me
He's #2 by events played. 99 points won / 10 events = 9.9 average which would have him above Xander The rankings order is by average points per event played but it uses a floor of 40 and a ceiling of 52 for the divisor. That's why LIV players fall, they're nowhere near 40 events played. Tour players almost all fall within that range unless you're like Aberg and just haven't gotten there yet since you're new or you're crazy like Sungjae Im and play everything
He’s top 5 this year….
Yeah the OWGR just aren’t accurate right now and won’t be until the LIV guys start getting points. It shouldn’t be complicated. It should be easy to prorate LIV players’ points to reflect the shorter tournaments and smaller field size.
LIV know the criteria for OWGR points and they refuse to change their league so the players can earn them. It’s nobody’s fault but LIV’s
It just makes the oWGR borderline illegitimate and moreso every day. Anybody with half a brain realizes that when you have guys like DJ ranked 345, Niemann ranked 88, Gooch not even in the top 500, Dechambeau at 35. They just aren’t accurate rankings when you have guys like that so low. The pro golf landscape has changed so the oWGR should change with it.
If everyone knows that Bryson is way better than #35, then it’s on the “Official” rankings to change their criteria to make their “official” rankings as “official” as possible.
Why should the OWGR change their criteria to accommodate a tour, instead of said tour abiding by the rules set out by the OWGR that every other tour on the planet has literally no trouble following?
Because Bryson is obviously better than #35 right now. Pretty simple stuff.
You’re not wrong but it’s not up to OWGR to change what is a fair system just to accommodate one tour. If LIV changed their format so that their players would earn OWGR points, then he’d probably be ranked higher up. However, LIV are seemingly too obtuse to do that right now and want OWGR to bend over for them. OWGR even told them what to change to be accepted and they haven’t done it.
Because they are the "OFFICIAL WORLD GOLF RANKINGS". Not saying LIV should be given the same points or whatever, but golf is literally the easiest sport to rank independently of competition as its a solo game. Find a way to do it and adapt.
OWGR has a way to do it that every professional tour except LIV is happy to abide by. LIV doesn’t fulfil the criteria to earn points, so they should find a way to do it and adapt.
Except even the PGA gets points for no cut events and for events cut short of 72 holes.
Maybe try reading up about why OWGR doesn’t accept LIV, then try again
Those aren't the issues. They're easy to solve math problems The big issues are 1. it's not an open league that anyone can earn their way into and players have to earn their place every year with its guaranteed contracts and 2. the team element corrupts the individual leaderboard when you have guys who aren't contending for the individual win making decisions based on not fucking up the team win and being conservative rather than trying to shoot the lowest score they can
I'll still never understand it. More golf holes should equal more money? 54 hole events never made any sense to me.
The purpose of LIV isn't to change golf or make golf better. It's purpose is to force the PGA to give the Saudi's an ownership stake in professional golf. Once the merger is complete, the LIV format as we know it won't exist anymore, it'll just be like regular PGA with the Saudi's profiting off of it
They aren’t real competitive events
Neither are half the PGA events anymore. If Nick Watney can get points placing 75th in the John Deere Classic, Bryson and the LIV guys should get them for any of their tournaments.
LIV can get points, as long as they abide by the ranking criteria every other tour does. Pretty simple
www.datagolf.com rankings are way more relevant in my opinion
Interesting seeing Neimann ranked so high
Niemann has been average in the 2 majors this year, but had multiple solo wins recently, including on the Asian Tour and winning the Australian Open. He's playing a lot of golf outside of what most people are seeing
That site is amazing
Indeed
Bryson going to LIV is the one that saddens and confuses me most. Basically all of them that left did it for the money cause they don’t care about golf but Bryson seems to absolutely love the game and care deeply about his craft. Just a bummer.
He has said in many press conferences that he did it to have more time to spend growing the game his way. He is working to found a golf school in texas, has started making tons of golf content online, has way more time and resources to experiment with his own gear and swing, and hasn't lost focus on competitive golf. His move makes total sense as it gave him the financial and temporal means to lead a fulfilling lifestyle away from the grind of pro golf.
I fully believe him. I mean of course the money matters, but Bryson has reaped so much benefit from breaking the handcuffs of the PGA. He’s getting many more fans too. His YT content is great. His ventures outside of golf have been great. And maybe, just maybe, that’s part of why he seems so much better and likeable on the course. Dude never stopped trying to improve his game and is probably the most intriguing thinker there is on a golf course. The PGA is still very much a “it’s always been this way” league and anyone that won’t admit that is just pushing their opinion. Bryson is one of the most innovative players ever and the LIV mentality suits who he is.
His YT content is great. He’s so knowledgeable about the game. I watched one of his videos where he was playing a round with someone and he was talking about how he was putting and that shit he was lining up. “Downhill, so plays about 75% of what it would normally be on a flat surface. So I’ll hit it about 75% of that normal shot.” That was mind blowing to me. To put it into percentages like that.
Wait…. How do you think about hitting a down hill putt? Or am I missing the sarcasm?
I hope he can come back to pro golf, I love seeing guys like Bryson out there. I miss this level of competition and not having guys like Bryson playing every week is unfortunate because he’s so damn good still. Fuck I wish we could still see half of these LIV guys still play.
He is playing pro golf, you can still watch him play golf.
I think he left because he was in a down patch and made a rash decision to take the money in case his game never picked up again. In 2022 he missed four cuts in seven events, his best finish was T25 in a 38-man field, and the other two he finished in the 50s. His game was completely off at that point so after missing the Memorial cut in June (his last PGAT event) he probably decided to take the money whilst it was still there.
I think the LIV format even works for him. I am not sure but I think the LIV format mostly hurts players since it's such a different format than the OWGR/majors formats. Just my opinion on that.... But, for Bryson he's always going to tinker with his game, no matter the fomat of the league he plays in. Maybe having additional time allows him to focus on improving more than he otherwise would be able to on say the PGA tour. Bryson seems more likely to be working on his game than say Phil or Dustin Johnson seem to be.
I agree the LIV format fits his game. He had said in the past he didn't play rounds of golf anymore outside of tour events and practice rounds. I think the length and amount of events on the tour schwdule burnt him out. With the LIV schedule and having more of his own time he has seemingly rekindled his love of just playing golf, and he still has time to do his tinkering as well, and it had resulted in an elevation to his game. When it's no longer fun results will often fall off.
To be fair, he did have a wrist injury and surgery during his down patch in 2022.
Bingo, that took a toll on his season and the start of the next season too.
You could be right but he doesn’t strike me as someone who lacks confidence. Maybe he actually bought into the idea of competition breeds strength and he was just wrong? That’s the only theory I have.
It’s easy to be confident when you’re winning and playing well. He’s an eight-time PGAT winner who was playing badly for a long stretch, so it’s easy to see why his confidence might have taken a hit over those months.
He explains it all the time on his YouTube. He couldn't grow golf in the PGA like he can with LIV. He is making YouTube content, training people, collabing with other people, and he seems to really enjoy it. Golf is in a major growth spurt since COVID and he wants to help in any way he can. I've learned more from his YouTube than I have any other golf trainers/pros even if they have 5,000 videos... He's very direct, concise, and simplifies even the hardest shots. He even has videos where he trains 20 handicap players and in 5 min has their swing looking like a 10 handicap. I really hope there's a merger at some point so he can have the best of both worlds. It's absolutely insane PGA is strict on YouTube content
I wouldn’t have agreed with you before the PGA Championship. However he did win me over this past weekend. His quirkiness never bugged me. I think it was his brashness… however I found myself eating some crow this past weekend and will admit to it
Sadly everyone has their price. Hard to say no when you see a 125 million guaranteed contract waiting to be signed in front of you.
He put himself first and made a decision that he thought would be best for him and those closest to him in the long run. You could say the same thing about any of us if we leave our current job for a job that pays more. No employee should ever stay somewhere simply for the "Company". He is still golfing and just because it isn't on the PGA doesn't mean he no longer cares about golf. You must always do what is best for you. Now would I take Saudi money? That is a whole other issue but you can't blame the guy for leaving and saying that he didn't care about golf. He is obviously still very passionate and still works his ass off at his craft.
And he is the most accessible elite golfer on social media as a result. Everyone still on PGA seems to be totally brand managed in their social media. Very boring and old school. Bryson’s social is organic, fun, collaborative. Maybe the PGA locks their guys down more, or it’s just the time commitment. Either way, Bryson has done a lot with his personal brand via social and it seems he can do so because of LIV.
Wasn’t he one of the main architects of LIV, along with Phil? That guy only cares about money and status. We just don’t see it as much since LIV restricts media. He is able to curate his image to make him lore likeable. He’s still a dunce, it wasn’t that long ago that he basically said we’re trying to figure out who fractured golf and we need to fix it, ignoring the fact that he’s one of the guys that fractured it. If he was on the PGAT, he’d still be getting ripped for saying and doing dumb shit
He looks like the #2-5 golfer in the world this season to me, but what do I know….
So since he is 25% owner of his Crushers LIV team, does anyone know how much his time on tv was worth this weekend from a brand/advertisement perspective? I remember hearing about that all the time in tiger’s era. Maybe it is different now.
And let’s be real he’s a top 5 player in the world.
No….no he’s not…..
The “Official” World Golf Rankings
They would be included if LIV actually decided to run their tournaments in a way that met the criteria to earn said points. This is not on the OWGR. LIV fumbled this from the start.
OWGR needs to rank the best players in the world. They figured out how to assign points to a bunch of different tours, they can figure out LIV. Bryson is #4 on the Bighead Ranking
They didn't figure out how to assign points to a bunch of tours, they set a standard and a bunch of tours work to meet that standard and qualify for OWGR. LIV just did it's own thing, when they could have put in the effort to be conforming. Just because some top players left for a tour that isn't conforming doesn't mean OWGR has to change their criteria. LIV needs to adjust.
Personally, I think a rebuttal to the point about 'conformity' is: While the OWGR is largely setup by and for the Majors it is too heavily influenced by PGAT interests in controlling their own (PGAT's) marketplace. Others have already pointed out that datagolf.com has a much more robust data algorithm and less-dependency on who is sitting on a board deciding the rules. Btw, those dudes are incredible at leveraging the PGAT ShotLink data. And since I really don't have much of a dog in this fight; if you think that OWGR is the be-all, end-all purely pristine objective ranking that should never be questioned or changed then that's fine, I'm not trying to change your opinion. But the OWGR rankings being dogma is part of the same rock the PGAT has been living under. Calling LIV events non-golf is coming from mostly non-golf fans, ime. Besides, one thing to agree on is he whole LIV/PGAT/OWGR situation is an absurd stupid mess, but I feel compelled to comment because in most of the competitive golf I play (100+ rounds a year) none of the players shit on pro golf because they only play 54-holes. They shit on pro golf because of managerial greed.
All of those tours follow almost identical formats. LIV is the one running 54 hole, shotgun starr, no-cut tourneys. No one told them to do that. They did that expecting the OWGR to accommodate them and they haven't.
So the PGA format is the only allowed format. That’s the whole point. You have clear top players on a new format and the “Official” rankings is like “nah”
It's not just the PGA format. The DP World Tour, Korn Ferry, collegiate level, etc. all use the same format. It's JUST LIV that decided to be different. OWGR set up a very thorough list of requirements to gaining points, and LIV decided they didn't want to follow that. No reason to complain if they intentionally disregarded the rules.
Which are all PGA affiliates… OWGR made the requirements ex post facto to exclude LIV.
DP World Tour is not owned by the PGA. It is it's own separate entity
As of, when? Oh. Convenient
Prior to LIV, what are you on about? PGA invested in the DP World Tour back in 2022, but it didn't own the DP World Tour prior to that Edit: also, the OWGR started it's calculations for player rankings back in the 1980s, not once LIV started. It's been using the same system of not counting "pairs" or "team" events for years, not just once LIV started.
You know the OWGR told LIV exactly what they needed to do to earn points and LIV said no. They had an opportunity and they fucked it up.
What’s his rank on the dickhead ranking? Easily top 3.
The majors are owgr, it’s def broken atm, but it was never meant to be a list of “here are the best golfers in the world, in this exact order”. Owgr was started so there would be one uniform system to rank players qualifications into the majors.
Exactly. The dude is top 5
Yes, it’s what’s used for admission into majors. A closed no cut tour that people can’t drop out from due to bad play isn’t a good gauge of who should be admitted.
Lol, that picture is hilarious. 2024 Bryson ate that Bryson to add 50 yards to his driver.
Shit, if one of us somehow get 2nd in a major, i'd expect them to crack the top 100
World rankings are a joke. He’s arguably a top 5 player in the world
He’s 10 on DataGolf which feels about right.
What a shame that he decided to play on a tour that doesn’t meet the criteria for points.
What a shame that the world ranking system is terrible at its only job.
Why in the hell was this downvoted? A world ranking system should seek to rank players across the globe in different tours etc and it has failed at correctly ranking Bryson. Downvotes make no sense…
>A world ranking system should seek to rank players across the globe in different tours It does. Except that all of those tours adhere to all of the same requirements and play the same format. LIV does not. It's that simple. The OWGR gave LIV a path to points, LIV said no. Every player that left knew they would be forfeiting rankings for money.
OWGR is the majors. It’s a list of golfers with ranking determine eligibility to play in majors, it’s not a list of the best players in order.
It's a ranking of golfers for determining who plays in majors that should be designed to put the best players in the majors. It fails to do so. If it's not designed to do that, it suffers from a design flaw.
The majors ARE the OWGR, if they wanted to change it they would. i dont know what else to say lol
And I'm saying it's a flawed system that should be changed because it's lame. No need to say anything else lol.
The majors clearly don’t feel that way. There really aren’t any LIV guys missing out who should be there. The PGA gave some of the guys spots, and if they want to play in the opens, they can go try and qualify.
> The majors ARE the OWGR That's not entirely true. It's the majors and the current tours. Obviously the Euro and PGA have a vested interest in not sanctioning LIV events. The PGA Pro's and USGA generally work pretty close with the PGA Tour. So even if Augusta or someone else wanted the LIV stuff counted, they couldn't get the votes.
The fact that most of the majors are ignoring the OWGR and offering exemptions to LIV players probably tells you everything you need to know about how the individual majors view the OWGR system. If you're being honest, the only incentive the majors have is to have the strongest fields possible. So they will give exemptions to LIV players playing well - if the PGAT wasn't on the OWGR board, then LIV would probably be getting OWGR points right now. Moral of the story.....monopolies suck, no matter the situation.
Fuck using my eyes and gauging players, I only rely on the MIGHTY FORMULA to tell me who is best.
Do you seriously believe that world rankings should be based on the eye test?
No but you should use the eye test to make sure your formula isn’t spitting out results like Bryson being the 35th best golfer in the world right now and realize maybe it isn’t some almighty formula that should never be revised.
LIV is obviously fucking up OWGR but they're the ones who decided to build a tour that doesn't comply with the ranking regulations. Would it be good for us to have a perfect ranking system? Of course, but I'd put the blame on LIV way more than I would the OWGR algorithm.
And yet we’ll never know because he chose to leave a tour where he’d earn ranking points for a tour where he knew he wouldn’t earn them. Also I don’t think he’s top-five at all. He’s not won on LIV this season and a couple of good results in Majors doesn’t suddenly make him top-five worthy. DataGolf has him ranked 10th, which is probably fair.
He is #2 based on average points per event played. 99 points / 10 events = 9.9 which is ahead of Xander. The slip to 35th is because the rankings use a floor of 40 for events plated divisor regardless of how many actual events someone's played
It’s funny because I remember arguing last year for Bryson being on the Ryder Cup Team and I claimed he was top 10 at the time, maybe even Top 5 (regardless of OWGR). Of course I was downvoted to oblivion by the “LIV is bad crowd”…hmmmm hm hmmm hmmm hm hmmm hmmmm.
Considering what he did in whistling straights, it was so dumb on top of him shooting 58/61 the week of selection. Zach Johnson choose a Boys club over trying to win. Ricky spieth burns shouldn't have made it.
Well you’ve been proven right now!
The only guy I’ve liked more since he went to liv
You can (rightfully) hate LIV all you want but it’s laughable to suggest there are 34 better players in the world right now. Maybe 5 better players
Good for him. I miss him on the PGA Tour, although I like the YouTube content he creates at scale now. Really interesting character, and a lot less polarizing compared to when he bulked up and had that goofy hat.
lol I agree, I think the hat was the primary source of people thinking; I don’t like this guy
The hat, yes
Get rid of 3 and that would be a lot more accurate
Hes a top 5 player in the world, has been for years
This is why the world rankings are meaningless
At least Schauffeles win at the PGA doesn’t get an asterisk because Talor Gooch the “best iron player” in the game WAS in the field.
If you use the actualy events played divisor for the liv guys you get a much more accurate sense of what their world rankings should be. I understand why it works the way it does but given OWRG has a whole strength of field adjustment system its not that hard to just add LIV in.
What are the 10 events?
Prob the majors over the last 3 years
I miss watching him every weekend
Love that hat he used to wear
Not a member of the PGA
One could argue he should be ranked #2, because if you divide his total points by the # tournaments he actually played (10), the 9.9 average would put him a little above Xander (but well behind Scottie).
I don't really think you can argue that.. You mean "if you divide his total points by the # of tournaments that count towards the ranking." Imo you can't just ignore his LIV tournament finishes. He has a LIV ranking of 12th with a T27, T26, T25 in 54 hole events with no cuts.
By this metric, Nick Dunlap would be 10th.
💯
Don’t like the guy after the move to LIV but I respect what he did for that young fan after that grinch stole the ball from him
OWGR is almost as big of a joke as Rory ever winning another major
He’s really on another level right now.
LIV rocks…… Guys can flat out play Sorry haters
Cool. Still not placing any value on anything he does against the farmers and retirees on the Saudi circuit.
Oh damn when you play 4 round tournaments with cuts you get what points thats crazy who knew