Joel Dahmen wears a bucket hat, almost didn't even show up to the last qualifier because he thought would be a waste of time, and is co leader going into saturday.
There’s got to be a plan for LIV to merge with another tour that accumulates OWGR points or for them to finagle their way into accumulating their own OWGR points. To me that’s the wild card. How are the LIV guys going to qualify for Majors going forward.
Of course. But I don’t think this is something that’s going to be around long term. I can’t say for sure what the shelf life is going to be right now, and that may not matter for some of the older has beens and not ever gonna bes like Poulter and Westwood and Garcia. Mickelson has an exemption for a few more years, but it’s pretty clear he will never win the US Open. I don’t know if he will ever contend for anything at this point, so he’s taking the money and running. Some of the younger guys though, are going to be left holding their [Richards] when this thing eventually dries up. Guess their hope is the ole ask for forgiveness and not permission thing. Or worst case they just live off of whatever they got in the first place, but anybody at this level is massive competitor.
Yeah, they have. But LIV is only 54 hole tournaments with a limited field and no cuts, so that’s where the finagling comes in. And Jay Monahan sits on the OWGR board.
According to what I’ve read the majors aren’t required to go by pga points. As an example the masters can invite literally any person they want to play.
Yes and no. It can get complicated, but of course the Masters invites all past winners to either/or play and attend the Champions dinner. They will likely continue to do so, in my opinion. But there is a standard or merit that has to be met in order to be invited, or qualify to play. It’s unique in that it’s their own standards and the field is the smallest of all the majors. So while they don’t invite anybody they want, they control their standards required to get in. A lot of these majors can kick the can down the road for now. They have it now but these guys will be losing all of their PGA Tour standing that would otherwise get them into majors outside of the exemptions you get for winning majors, finishing top 5, 10, 15 etc, and not all of those are lifetime. So they can worst case, fall back on the OWGR. But if LIV doesn’t count toward that, so eventually they’ll drop out of that too. The major winners jumping ship don’t have a lot to lose right now, so they’re taking the money and running into retirement. They’ll have all kinds of winners exceptions for a while. But the others guys are essentially giving up their competitive career. They won’t get into The Players, which had the largest purse in golf this year. And in the case of the Europeans, possible Ryder Cup places and captaincies (Americans are too, but its more important to Euros). There’s still a lot to play out, and the Saudis may even get bored before it does. I like the changes the tour made in response. There should be more. A lot more.
Here info on the new changes in the PGA Tour. https://www.espn.com/golf/story/_/i...lf-invitational-series-irrational-threat-game
I don’t think it’s too late, but Monaham needs visible and out in front of all this going forward. This is pretty good take: