Shamefully, Official World Golf Rankings don’t recognize Brooks Koepka-led LIV Tour | Commentary

You would have thought that when Florida State alum Brooks Koepka won the PGA Championship on Sunday that CBS would have asked him the obvious question during the televised post-tournament interview.

The question should have gone something like this: “Brooks, since you are the first golfer to win a major while playing on the LIV Tour, how much does this victory elevate your tour?”

Instead, Jim Nance and CBS jettisoned any semblance of journalistic integrity and chose to ignore the biggest storyline in golf over the last year in order to suck up to its broadcasting partner and LIV rival — the PGA Tour. Yes, during the post-tournament press conference with real journalists, Koepka was later asked about representing LIV, but the point is that CBS — the network of iconic broadcast journalists such as Walter Cronkite, Connie Chung and Harry Reasoner — should be ashamed of itself for turning into a shell, er shill of its former self.

If you’re going to tell the story of the PGA Championship then tell the whole story. And a major part of the PGA Championship story was that Koepka legitimized and validated the golfers who defected from the PGA Tour to play on the Saudi-funded LIV Tour. You can hate LIV all you want, but you can’t deny that Koepka’s victory was historically groundbreaking and proved that LIV golfers belong on the sport’s biggest stages and should be accredited by the Official World Golf Rankings.

As ESPN’s Tony Kornheiser pointed out on PTI Monday: “This is a very important victory in the history of golf. The most important football game ever played was when the New York Jets won Super Bowl III because that validated the merger and told people that the NFL and the AFL are equal, and from that point on the NFL took off like a rocket ship. What this victory by Brooks Koepka does is that it says to golf: ‘You gotta let everybody in. You may hate the Saudi tour, you may hate the money, you may not want to watch it on TV, but you cannot shut these [LIV] guys out. They’ve got to be included.”

Kornheiser was alluding to the OWGR, which is still trying to decide whether to recognize LIV Tour events. Why is that important? Because these rankings are one of the key components to determine who gets invited to the majors. While 13 of LIV’s 48-player roster have previously won majors giving them exemptions to play in the majors for a certain number of years, those exemptions are quickly running out.

For instance, Bubba Watson and Sergio Garcia, former major winners, were not ranked high enough to play in the PGA Championship last weekend. Without a path to earn points, many LIV golfers have plunged outside the top 100 in the world.

How can we take the OWGR seriously when they don’t acknowledge the second-best tour on the planet? Come on now, are these the Official World Golf Rankings or the PGA Tour-Approved World Golf Rankings? I’m not saying the 54-hole, no-cut, limited-field LIV events should get the same number of OWGR points as a PGA Tour event, but surely — in the name of fair play — OWGR officials can come up with a formula where LIV golfers can move up the rankings.

Seriously, how can OWGR recognize 24 different tours, including those in Asia, Europe, Mexico, Thailand, Japan, Korea, China, Australia and even the Alps, but not acknowledge the existence of LIV?

Here are just two examples of what a joke the Official World Golf Rankings are:

Koepka, who has won five of his last 22 majors — a rate exceeded only by Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Nick Faldo and Ben Hogan in the last 75 years — is ranked No. 13. Meanwhile, the PGA Tour’s Rory McIlroy, who hasn’t won a major in nine years, is ranked third

Talor Gooch, who is the hottest golfer on the LIV Tour and has won two tournaments already this season, is ranked 67th in the world. Meanwhile, the PGA Tour’s Rickie Fowler, who hasn’t won a tournament in four years, is ranked 52nd.

Shamefully, Gooch doesn’t have enough OWGR points to qualify for the U.S. Open because the USGA curiously altered its criteria in February. Originally, Gooch, when he was a PGA Tour member, had secured a spot in the U.S. Open by qualifying for the 2022 Tour Championship, but then he jumped to LIV and the USGA subtly changed its U.S. Open qualifying standards.

Instead of saying players “qualifying” for the Tour Championship would get into the U.S. Open, the USGA tweaked the wording to say players who qualified “and were eligible” for the Tour Championship would get into the U.S. Open. Obviously, when Gooch jumped to LIV, he was no longer “eligible” to play in the Tour Championship.

This is all just a bunch of petty politics to try and keep as many LIV golfers as possible out of the majors. Which, of course, only hurts the game of golf.

Let’s be honest, shall we? The four majors are the only tournaments that most casual golf fans really care about, and we just want to see the best players in the world going head to head in those tournaments. Judging by the cheers Koepka received at the PGA Championship, it’s obvious golf fans don’t really give a damn whether he plays on the PGA Tour or LIV Tour

It should be noted that four of the OWGR board members who will soon vote on whether to accredit LIV events are the heads of the organizations that run golf’s four majors — Will Jones (Masters), Seth Waugh (PGA Championship), Mike Whan (U.S. Open) and Martin Slumbers (Open Championship)

Gentlemen, a word of warning:

If you’re going to put on your tournaments but not include some of the best players in the world then we golf fans will soon find it necessary to start downgrading the status of your events from majors to mid-majors.

Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com. Hit me up on Twitter @BianchiWrites and listen to my Open Mike radio show every weekday from 6 to 9:30 a.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and HD 101.1-2