OWGR: The Gatekeeper of Golf
OWGR: The Gatekeeper of Golf
A company with 0 employees and $430,000 in revenue has major influence.
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Hey Golfers —
The Official World Golf Ranking points are a widely discussed topic in the professional golf environment.
In today’s newsletter — we are going to look at three items.
OWGR background and overview
OWGR’s recent changes and implications
LIV Golf’s perspective on OWGR points
Let’s get to it.
World golf ranking points were rolled out at the 1986 Masters under the name ‘Sony Ranking’ thanks to a Sony Electronics sponsorship. The founder of IMG and Arnold Palmer’s agent, Mark McCormack, was highly influential in the process. IMG managed and owned the proprietary information related to the ranking points system until Mr. McCormack died in 2004.
A new company was formed in 2004 and acquired the ranking points system from IMG. The company’s name? Official World Golf Ranking.
OWGR is a company located in England. Two items caught my eye as I looked through their financial information.
0 employees
$430,000 in revenue in 2021
While OWGR has no employees — it had expenses it charged to the European Tour that are the equivalent of two employees in $101,000.
The revenue is generated from charging its seven members a fee of $61,000.
The seven members of the OWGR:
PGA Tour
European Tour
PGA of America
United States Golf Association
R&A Championships
Augusta National
International Federation of PGA Tours
Each member has a respective employee listed as a director on the OWGR company financials.
One of the more interesting items I found during my research is that the OWGR and European Tour share the same address on Wentworth Drive.
Official World Golf Ranking recently announced enhancements to the point system. According to OWGR — the process began in July of 2018 with an independent analysis of the point system.
The ranking point changes are complex. Each player in the system has a Strokes Gained rating so that each tournament field will be evaluated on the skill level of each player in the field instead of players in the field with a Top 200 ranking.
In general, the points changes have been well received within the golf community.
But I want to discuss another change.
OWGR doesn’t publically state what the requirements are for a tour to receive Official World Golf Ranking points, and it is thought that some of those requirements have recently changed.
Let’s lay them out.
A tour must operate for one year before it can apply for OWGR points
A tour must have events contested over 72 holes with a cut
An annual Q-School at the beginning of each season
An average field size of 75 players over the season
Events with a minimum purse of $50,000
A tour must operate at least ten events per year
An opportunity for a player to progress to a full member tour
Access for local and regional players at each event
So what is LIV Golf’s perspective? They think their tour should receive OWGR points and retroactively to the first event.
LIV Golf applied for OWGR points earlier this year — which begs the question. Why did they apply when they haven’t been operating for an entire year?
I don’t know if they fully believe they should receive OWGR points or if it is a strategy set up by their legal team.
LIV Golf is an outsider — the five families of golf sit on the OWGR board. They ultimately decide which tour gets approved for ranking points or not. In LIV Golf’s eyes — the system is fixed against them; it’s unfair.
Right or wrong — LIV assumes Jay Monahan and Keith Pelley won’t award OWGR points to their tour since they are competitors. This is one of the few areas I can see where LIV Golf is coming from. It is also why I think LIV is pushing for rankings points so early, even though they have not been operating for a year. They are painting a narrative — a narrative that the OWGR is against them before the outcome has been decided.
LIV Golf may be able to leverage the Asian Tour to get around some of the requirements — but they will need to change their format to 72 holes with a cut.
A question that will go unanswered — an opportunity for a player to progress to a full member tour. Is the OWGR stating that any new tour that receives ranking points in the future will only be a developmental tour?
I have often wondered — why didn’t LIV operate under the Asian Tour as a special series. Similar to what they are doing with the International Series. It seems too easy; I have to be missing something.
The OWGR — a company with 0 employees and $430,000 in revenue, has a significant influence on golf. And it will for some time.
Have yourself a great Monday. Talk to you next week!
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The new changes to OWGR points makes LIV being approved for points less important for LIV. Smaller field events, like LIV, don't have enough players to generate high field.ratings, so LIV events will only offer 25 points to the winner when/if they are approved. LIV's application for world ranking points is possibly more about future legal action.
Very interesting - wild how much politics is in golf.