PINEHURST, N.C. – We are two years into the ongoing divisions in professional men’s golf. Passions have cooled, the sabers have been laid down and everyone involved seems a lot more agreeable now than they did in the bomb-throwing days of 2022. As a result, golf’s powers that be are now approaching LIV Golf more openly. players, and that could mean opening more doors for the best players on the breakout tour.
Golf’s crown jewels are the four majors, like this week’s US Open. The most viable route to the majors is through the Official World Golf Rankings. Play reasonably well for an extended period of time, and you’ll rise to the higher echelons of the OWGR and receive an automatic invite. (For example, the US Open invites every player in the top 60.)
But since LIV tournaments don’t count towards the OWGR, LIV players are falling down the rankings and their future major prospects are in serious jeopardy. This poses a real problem for tournaments that want to bring together the best golfers.
The US Open offers the most merit-based option: play your way in. The “Open” in “US Open” means that literally anyone can play their way into the tournament as long as they survive the rigors of qualifying.
“It’s not a closed field,” USGA Mike Whan said Wednesday. “It doesn’t require a committee or an invitation. If you want to play in this field, you have the opportunity to play in this field, and we’re proud of that.”
Four LIV players – Dean Burmester, Eugenio Chacarra, David Puig and Sergio Garcia – qualified their way onto the field. (Garcia was an alternate who received a later invitation.) A total of thirteen LIV players will compete in this year’s US Open, and nearly three dozen had the opportunity to begin their qualifying journey at the highest level.
“If they really wanted to be here, they could play 36 holes and qualify,” Whan said, “and some did, to their credit.”
The USGA, which organizes the US Open, is considering routes for deserving LIV players that do not require qualification. Last month, the PGA Championship invited several LIV players, including 2023 individual champion Talor Gooch, and the USGA could implement a similar plan.
“We’re going to talk about it this season, whether or not there should be a path to someone or someone who performs really well at LIV and who can get the opportunity to play that way,” Whan said. “We are serious about that.”
A major roadblock, Whan notes, is that the goalposts for a solution to golf’s ongoing split remain in motion. The PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund have missed multiple self-imposed and proposed deadlines to resolve their differences and translate their “framework agreement” into something substantial.
“If I’m completely honest with you, we’ve always felt over the last year and a half that we’re always three months away from having a good understanding of what the new structure is going to look like,” Whan said. . “The reason we’re going to be more vocal about that next year is because maybe this is the new world order.” In other words, if LIV Golf is here to stay, maybe it’s time for the US Open and the other majors to figure out a way to bring the best players into their field.
In short: there is still a path to the US Open, regardless of what happens with LIV in the coming years. “You have to want to be here,” he said, “but if you want to be here, there’s definitely a way to get here.”
