| LIV decision on OWGR is the right one and it’s time for other Tours to abandon it  Shubhankar Sharma (Source: Joy Chakravarty) Early last week, LIV Golf Commissioner Greg Norman wrote to his members that the League is abandoning its pursuit of Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) points. It pains me to write this, but it is now time for the Commissioners of every other Tours in the world to show some self-respect and disassociate themselves from the OWGR, which has already lost its meaning and significance at the elite level, and is doing nothing to serve the smaller Tours. The recent decision by the R&A to give five spots to players as per the Federations Ranking of OWGR is the only good news players from other Tours in the world have got lately. But The Open is the only championship that has adopted it. And, the Federations Ranking is only a part of the solution. The OWGR also decided recently to give bonus points to multiple winners on Tours. It is like rummaging through your pockets stuffed with $100 notes, and then miraculously pulling out a few cents and giving it to the beggars. Obviously, there are two issues with the OWGR at the moment. A lot has been talked about the first one, which is its inability to incorporate LIV Golf into the system. The second issue is what it is doing to every other Tour in the world. Take out the four LIV Golf players in the top-50 (and they will not remain there for long), and the whole list is made of PGA Tour players. Take Rasmus Hojgaard, Thriston Lawrence, Rikuya Hoshino and Zander Lombard out of the equation, and there is not a single non-PGA Tour player in the top-100. And this is the most shocking one – if you take out the JGTO players, the top-ranked Asian player in the world now is India’s Shubhankar Sharma at No202. The top-ranked non-PGA Tour Australasian player is No151 Daniel Hillier of New Zealand. And the highest ranked South American player, without LIV Golf stars, is Korn Ferry Tour player Cristobal Del Solar, of Chile, at 229. I have said it before, and I will say it again – I completely understand that the system of awarding OWGR points is scientific now. But if science was the answer to all our problems, we’d never have Shakespeares, Picassos, Mozarts and Frank Gehrys in our world. In much the same way, while we need superstars like Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler from the biggest Tour in the world to play the biggest golf tournaments, we also need to acknowledge the efforts of players like Denwit Boribunsoob, Taichi Kho, Kazuma Kobori and Taiga Semikawa. They may not give the elite PGA Tour players a run for their money, but they serve a more important cause – they help grow the game in their own geographies. Just because there were a very few random cases of players from smaller Tours rising into the top-50 of the world in the past, the OWGR adopted the new system, reportedly at the behest of the PGA Tour who funded the research that went into it. The intentions were good to that point, but what they did not realise that it was just a simple case of headache when they thought it was cancer. The treatment has been so aggressive that the whole body is taking a beating now. For the very various Tours and countries, it is much more than just a pathway into the major championships. It’s a matter of pride. It’s an example for their young players. Just take the case of our own Jeev Milkha Singh and Anirban Lahiri. They would not have been able to play as many majors and WGCs today, despite the stupendous performances they had in 2006-2008 and 2013-2015 respectively, if we had today’s OWGR system back then. For the Western world, it would be very difficult to appreciate the impact that Jeev and Lahiri have had on Indian golf. They really are generational players like those on the PGA Tour, except for the fact that their influence is over a different part of the world. As for LIV Golf, Norman and the players have had enough. Their efforts to become part of the OWGR have become a leveraging point for others, and a constant source of laughs for the anti-LIV brigade. The OWGR, without LIV players like Bryson DeChambeau and Joaquin Niemann, is looking more and more silly. The joke is now on them! Anthony Kim update Since we focused the whole newsletter on the return of Anthony Kim last week, it would be rather prudent to give an update on what he has been up to in his second week of comeback. I personally thought that the Hong Kong Golf Club, where he played LIV Golf Hong Kong, would be a much tougher test, even though the golf course was a lot shorter than the one in Jeddah. That’s because the heavily contoured small greens, coupled with tree-lined fairways, are a much bigger challenge, especially when his iron play wasn’t sharp. Kim started with a 6-over 76, and you could hear groans of ‘here we go again’ from his detractors, but he was much better in his 72 on Saturday, and then came a stunning Sunday round of five-under 65 in possibly the worst playing condition the whole week. It was the third best score of the day after a couple of 63s (Dustin Johnson, Niemann) and a couple of 64s (Paul Casey, Kevin Na). In Jeddah, Kim admitted to having starting troubles and made most of his bogeys in the stretch of first 5-6 holes. On Sunday in Hong Kong, he started with two birdies in his first four holes, and was spectacular with his putter throughout the day in finishing 50th in the 54-man field. Kim now plays the International Series Macau, presented by Wynn, this week, and it would be fascinating to see how he performs in a full-field tournament. | 
