Greg Norman was right, the World Golf Rankings mean nothing

Golf is impossible. The canyon dividing PGA and DP World Tours, from LIV Golf, is still as vast as it ever was.It’s quite possible that the gulf separating LIV Golf from everywhere else won’t ever be bridged.

The British Open is being held for the 153rd time this week.

Consider this: Jon Rahm is currently world No. 72, according to the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR). He won the Masters in 2023 and the US Open two years before that, and that’s the only reason he qualified to peg it up at Royal Portrush.

If he’d been relying on world rankings points, he’d be doing something else this week, well away from Northern Ireland. In order to rely solely on ranking points to play at the Open, players need to be inside the world’s top 50.

Cameron Smith, who won the tournament at St Andrews in 2022, is presently ranked world No. 202. Not quite as excellent as Italy’s own Francesco Laporta, but slightly better than England’s Dan Bradbury. Who? I’ve never heard of them either.

Smith’s ranking has plummeted more quickly than that of the 1980s professional wrestler of great note, King Kong Bundy, who was thrown off a roof after signing with LIV Golf three years ago. That’s in part due to the rapid deterioration of the quality of his game, and if the influence of leaving the PGA Tour has had an impact on that.

Cameron Smith on the 18th green during day one of the British Open.Credit: Getty Images

Smith may never ascend golf’s Everest again due to his decision to join the Saudi-funded LIV league. That reality constitutes a threat to the core integrity of golf.

Is it actually the case that Rahm and Smith are in world golf’s pecking order, where their respective rankings say they are? It’s a high mountain to be among the best 50 players in the world, and it’s impossible to maintain that level if all that you do inside the ropes, outside golf’s four majors, is be intentionally ignored.

In the three years since the first ball was struck in a LIV tournament, professional golf has become ever so slightly ludicrous. Two years ago, on these pages, I asked what happens to the sixty-odd players who’d signed for the LIV Tour, two years down the track, if whatever they achieve in the meantime counts for zilch? Because the OWGR are based entirely on ranked performances across the previous 24 months.

Midway through 2025, my question can be answered: golf’s world rankings system is an abject absurdity. Sure, hitching onto LIV Golf’s travelling circus has done nada for the cultivation and maintenance of the technical skills and temperament required to compete at the highest level, for either Rahm or Smith, but that’s a different argument.

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The crux of the issue is that LIV events are excluded from the OWGR. That’s an unacceptable reality that should rightly cause offence to all professional players– it isn’t just the LIV players this freezer treatment directly affects.

LIV Golf management this week made a fresh application to the powers who control the OWGR for LIV events to be included in the calculation of world golf rankings. The OWGR meets annually at the British Open. LIV’s previous application to OWGR was formally withdrawn last year.

There’s an indivisible absurdity here. Players began defecting to LIV three years ago. There’s been a series of LIV tournaments played and won. Hardly anyone truly pays attention, but regardless, it’s wrong that those tournaments, and their entrants’ results, are ignored for the purpose of measuring the performance of the thousands of players on the OWGR rankings list. That’s not right.

There’s at least two fundamental problems with the intransigence of those in charge of the OWGR (including PGA Tour and European Tour representatives), regarding LIV players and their achievements in LIV tournaments.

Jon Rahm tees off at the British Open.Credit: AP

Three years ago, the exclusion could be explained on the basis that assessments needed to be made as to what LIV is. Now the exclusion is churlish.

LIV events are contrived, with their 54-hole, no cut, limited-field formats and confected atmosphere. It’s a closed shop in terms of the players who compete. But by equal measure, results achieved in LIV tournaments must count for something.

For players currently ranked inside the top 10 or top 50 of the OWGR, that ranking no longer means what it says because players like Rahm have their regular-season results excluded from all consideration. The best aren’t the best any more.

The last open door for LIV players outside the top 50 is via open qualifying events for the US Open and The Open championships.

Australia’s Jason Day is playing in The Open championships on account of his ranking.Credit: AP

In the future, it means major championships will exclude players who should rightfully be there. What then happens, the major tournaments will have their importance eroded. The passage for LIV players to play in The Open wasn’t non-existent, but the path was so narrow it may as well be.

It’s a matter of high farce that LIV-aligned players can’t earn world golf rankings points.

That’s not to say that a 54-hole LIV closed-shop event should be ranked on par with a PGA Tour event that has a field four times as deep. LIV is anything but cutthroat. It’s not the best of anything.

Yet, the 54-hole Big Easy Tour – a development tour in South Africa, composed largely of golfing unknowns – is recognised for OWGR purposes. Examined through the same prism, it’s inexplicable that the LIV Tour isn’t.

That contrived anomaly must be rectified; otherwise, professional golf and its major tournaments will continue to suffer credibility damage. By the status quo, Rahm might well be ranked outside the world’s top 300 next year. Reckon that’s accurate?

The problem is that the highest-ranking officials from the PGA Tour and DP World Tour sit among those who decide which tournaments and tours are recognised for rankings purposes. Fair and reasonable? Or exclusionary and anti-competitive?

I adore golf. What’s happened in the sport these last three years troubles me greatly, though the legal gymnastics intrigue me.

In the late 1980s, when Greg Norman was on a streak as the world’s number one ranked golfer, he used to say regularly that the world rankings meant nothing. Four decades later, he’s right.