LICC

Rory showed great leadership this past year and was stabbed in the back. I can see him deciding to get out of the politics of the tours merging. That said, I can't see him moving and playing mainly in DPWT events. He is too competitive for that. He either stays and plays mostly PGA Tour events (and majors) or scales back entirely and only plays majors and a handful of other events.

The OWGR is not supposed to be determining who are the best players on the planet. It is supposed to be ranking the players who play in events on tours that have sufficiently similar competitive attributes. When Mickelson and Tiger and Rory and JT et al play for millions of dollars in The Match events, no one would think the OWGR should award points for it. But they are playing for a significant dollar amount and they are among the top talented golfers on the planet. But those matches don't have the competitive tour elements to compare to events on tours that get OWGR points. If LIV had a more competitive qualification and relegation process, I'm guessing OWGR would give its events some level of points reduced from PGA Tour events.

I have to agree that if you take this as “love of money over all else” then you don’t really understand it.

No one other than entitled LIV players will consider OWGR obsolete for not degrading its criteria for an exhibition tour. As for the majors, the ones not already in can try to qualify for the Opens. And I really don’t care if I don’t see Talor Gooch play the Masters or the PGA.

LIV events are real competition, but they don't include the same competition requirements that OWGR needs to validly and fairly compare to other tours. These LIV players knew or should have known that they were going to a tour that is really a money exhibition and not a true competitive tour in the sense of qualifying and having to perform to remain.

That is not what they mean by “closed shop”. It is not the limited field, but the lack of qualifying and relegation season to season.

Definitely the Masters, by a wide margin. It is by far the most watched and most popular event in golf. I love the Ryder Cup but not nearly as the Masters. The US and British Opens are bigger too IMO.

Except the PGAT events with no cuts require qualification based on prior performance for everyone to get into those events. I'm surprised OWGR denied LIV entirely. LIV does have a competitive season playing for substantial monetary stakes. The 54 holes, no-cut, shotgun start, lack of any real substantial qualifying and relegation would drop the points values a lot, but I thought those events would be worth something. Maybe 10-20% of the level of a PGAT event. But I can't stand LIV or the sell-outs who joined, so I'm not upset about them getting denied. I hope the PGA Tour players somehow torpedo the merger deal and carry on without them.

Homa, Cantlay, Clark, Koepka, and Harmon went a combined 9-7-5 I believe. The top players (except Sheffler) held their own and did well.

The top US players played just as good as Rahm, Rory and Hovland. But when a third of your team doesn’t deserve to be there based on playing performance, you lose big. And taking five weeks off is ridiculous if you are serious about wanting to win.

JT was terrible all year and wasn’t good in the tournament. Other players were much better than him this year.

JT was 20th is strokes gained during the tournament. Koepka was 1-1-1 and part of the team that got smashed 9-7. There were 3-4 players better by far this year than the ones picked. That is 1/3rd of the team. Of course it would have made a difference.

JT played just ok. Zach’s captains picks went 6-12-4 by my count. That tells all right there. The old buddy network instead of picking by merit led to another failure.

NBC’c coverage is HORRIBLE. 90% of the air time are the matches that are 3 or 4 up. I’m barely seeing the tied or 1 up matches. Terrible.

6.5-1.5 When you pick the team based on your buddy group rather than merit, this is the garbage result you get.