LIV Golf's Attempt to Pull a Fast One on World Golf Rankings Failed

LIV Golf will be broadcast on cable television in the US after the organization agreed to pay Fox for the privilege to do so, but their quest for legitimacy continues in earnest. It has to. LIV formed its core of golfers by throwing an ungodly amount of money around. With those golfers came fans. But it will be difficult for LIV to grow in terms of audience or entice other golfers to join without giving the tournaments meaning. Since LIV golfers are banned from the PGA Tour and the league's events do not qualify for World Golf Ranking points, LIV events are basically exhibitions with big purses which have technically already been paid out.

What Greg Norman and co. are apparently coming to realize is that it's hard to get fans to care about tournaments without any stakes. This is probably why they tried to pull a fast one on the Official World Golf Ranking and formed a "strategic alliance" with the MENA Tour in order to get LIV golfers some World Golf Ranking points. The deal was basically that the MENA Tour would act as if the LIV events in Bangkok and Jeddah were MENA events and therefore the golfers participating would get points.

Well, it did not work. The OWGR released a statement on Thursday that effectively stated they saw right through the ploy and MENA didn't give the organization enough time to approve the plan, so there would be no World Golf points awarded.

Who could have seen this coming? Well, pretty much everyone. It was clear as soon as LIV announced the MENA Tour partnership that it was an underhanded attempt to skirt around the rules and get what they want via technicality. And it failed. Pretty much sums up the whole LIV experience to date, doesn't it?