Louis Oosthuizen blasts OWGR fallacy amid LIV Golf application

Major championships are where legends are made in the sport of golf. Every player and fan alike knows and understands this. The sport has grown accustomed to seeing the best players in the world battling it out each year at the four majors.

That is no longer the case.

Players who jumped ship from the PGA Tour for the upstart LIV Golf league have precipitously fallen down the Official World Golf Rankings. That’s because LIV Golf events do not award players any points.

One such player is the 2010 Open Championship winner, Louis Oosthuizen, who has fallen to 390th in the OWGR.

“It’s not a world ranking system,” Oosthuizen told bunkered.co.uk. “You can say it’s more PGA Tour ranking than anything else.

“It’s frustrating for everyone because you used to measure yourself on that and where you are. It’s not just being a LIV player. It’s being a South African player on the Sunshine Tour, being in Asia, all over the world, you’re not getting rankings now unless you’re playing PGA Tour.”

Photo by Stephen Pond/Getty Images

Many of the best players in the world do in fact play on the PGA Tour. Oosthuizen acknowledges that, but the semantics of the OWGR are clearly off.

“They do have the top players but it’s definitely not a fair system at the moment because you can’t tell me there’s 10 or 15 guys on LIV that aren’t in the top 50 or top 40. It’s got to be looked at.”

Someone ought to let Oosthuizen know that it is being looked at. In fact, OWGR chairman Peter Dawson recently announced they are close to coming to a decision on LIV Golf’s application for points.

Oosthuizen is playing in the DP World Tour’s Dunhill Links Championship at St. Andrews. Normally, as a member of LIV Golf, he would not have been allowed in the event; however, he received a sponsor’s invite.

The South African is tied for 40th at 4-under as the third round of play Saturday was suspended due to weather.