Don’t call it a comeback!
On Tuesday afternoon, LIV Golf announced it would shift all events to 72 holes effective immediately, bringing the rival league in line with the competitive standard in the remainder of pro golf. The move clears one potential hurdle from the runway as the league seeks to achieve entrance into the Official World Golf Ranking (or OWGR), providing LIV players with access to the all-powerful world ranking points used to determine major championship eligibility.
Though the move to 72 holes had been mulled and rumored, it still arrived as a stunner to the golf world on Tuesday. A significant piece of LIV’s initial sell to golf was its 54-hole events, which league officials said slimmed costs and streamlined the viewing experience. Indeed, even LIV’s name was tied to its 54-hole identity, originating from the Roman numeral for “54.” (LIV has also tied the number 54 to a “perfect” score in golf — 18 birdies on a par-72 course.)
“We will continue to have that conversation going forward,” former LIV CEO Greg Norman said about the possibility of a 72-hole shift in the summer of 2024. “But we sit back and say, what value do we get from putting on television on Thursday? How do we build out in the future?”
Radical as LIV’s thinking might have been, no amount of innovation could help the league overcome two hard truths: LIV needed OWGR status to provide a pathway to major championship eligibility, and major championship eligibility was needed to meaningfully steal talent or market share from the PGA Tour and DP World Tours. (Previously, the only pathways for a LIV player into the majors were an exemption from previous major championship success, a special exemption, or qualifying.)
The OWGR’s position on LIV had remained consistent since the time of the league’s abandoned first application: LIV was too much of a “closed shop,” and the limits of its competitions (no cuts, smaller fields, 54 holes) made it difficult to distribute ranking points equitably.
LIV’s players fought back against that categorization, arguing that the length of the competition had no bearing on its competitive significance — some of them arguing against the 72-hole standard that has been used to determine golf tournaments for most of golf’s history.
“It’s just funny to me, this arbitrary number of 72,” Talor Gooch, one of the players most affected by the league’s lack of world ranking points, said around the time of LIV’s inception. “Why is it not 90? Why is it not 108? We just decided to make that number the number, for what reason?”
Evidently, LIV’s current leadership — led by CEO Scott O’Neill — deemed the potential upside of major championship eligibility was more enticing than matters of branding. The decision to move to 72 holes should expedite the league’s application for OWGR eligibility under new president Trevor Immelman, providing LIV with the kernel that has proved elusive since launch: A path for LIV players to play their way into the majors.
