LIV Golf has been handed another significant blow, with Bryson DeChambeau dropping out of the top ten of the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR).
The American’s slide down the table means that there are now no LIV Golf league players in the top 10.
England’s Tommy Fleetwood overtook DeChambeau in the rankings after his third-place finish at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship – an event which was won by LIV’s Tyrrell Hatton.
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The reshuffle is unlikely to come as a major surprise to LIV Golf chiefs though given their ongoing feud with OWGR over the system they use to draw up their rankings and the competitions that they acknowledge.
The OWGR board have rejected several approaches from LIV Golf requesting official recognition for their breakaway competition, which would then see their players rank more favourably in the top ten. The most recent refusal came last October.
Asked previously about the reasoning behind not entertaining LIV Golf’s approaches, OWGR head Peter Dawson said: “This decision not to make them eligible is not political. It is entirely technical.
??????❌⛳️ No LIV golfers remain in the Top 10 of the OWGR after Bryson DeChambeau fell to 11th. This past week, Sergio Garcia said that fighting the OWGR system is “no longer worth it for us.” Do you agree? pic.twitter.com/5vzjrQ0zGP
— NUCLR GOLF (@NUCLRGOLF) October 13, 2024
“LIV players are self-evidently good enough to be ranked. They're just not playing in a format where they can be ranked equitably with the other 24 tours and thousands of players trying to compete on them."
LIV Golf responded with a strong statement of their own, questioning how OWGR’s objective is to rank the best golfers in the world but refusing to acknowledge those who are competing at the very highest level in a breakaway league.
LIV Golf ruled earlier this year that they would no longer continue to push for ranking recognition, with Sergio Garcia recently admitting that he does not believe competing for OWGR points is worthwhile anymore whilst he, and others, compete elsewhere.
Speaking to GolfMagic, the 44-year-old said: “To be totally honest, I don't think world ranking points are worth it anymore for us. Even if we got world ranking points now with the rankings we have like myself down in 390th, it just wouldn't really help the majority of us.
"We were looking at it and for someone to be able to stay in the top 50 in the world, you would probably have to win like 10 of the 14 tournaments on LIV Golf."
