LIV hope for rankings ‘solution’ by 2026 season

LIV Golf chief executive Scott O’Neil is optimistic the tour will secure official world golf ranking points for players in 2026.

The breakaway tour, which launched in 2022, has been locked out of the OWGR because of its 54-hole, no-cut, closed-field model, but they believe gaining ranking points would be transformative.

It would automatically enable more LIV players to qualify for majors and remove one of the biggest remaining barriers between the league and the established golf ecosystem.

O’Neil has described ongoing talks with OWGR as encouraging.

“We are working very closely with [chairman] Trevor Immelman and the board of OWGR,” O’Neil, who replaced Greg Norman as LIV chief executive at the start of 2025, told BBC Sport NI.

“It’s likely that will have an impact at some point. We are having conversations with Trevor, who is doing an extraordinary and difficult job towards a solution that we hope to have in place by next season.

The headline change which is set to help facilitate the rankings shift is the move from 54 to the more traditional 72-hole tournaments.

Whether this a concession or a calculated step toward legitimacy on its own terms remains to be seen, but O’Neil says the decision is also driven by commercial reality.

There are sponsors and broadcast partners who want more television air-time, while he believes the extra day of play will also create space for the concerts, DJs and fan experiences that have become a significant part of LIV events.

“Whatever we have to do to get more people invested in this great game, we’ll do it,” added O’Neil.

Despite the format change, the LIV name – which is 54 in Roman numerals – will remain.

“LIV is a brand,” O’Neil added, pointing out that the Roman numeral 54 originally symbolised a round of golf featuring a birdie on every one of the 18 holes, as much as the total number of holes in a tournament or players in the field.

O’Neil, who has more than 25 years experience managing global sports and entertainment brands, laid out a vision for LIV Golf that is in equal parts defiant and conciliatory.

His immediate priority is the league’s growth and global expansion, not reuniting men’s professional golf.

There is pragmatic openness to working with the rest of the sport, but seemingly without any desperation to force the full merger which was agreed by the PGA Tour, LIV and DP World Tour in 2023.

Negotiations are still ongoing two and a half years later despite an intervention by US President Donald Trump, but O’Neil argues that different leagues with different aims can co-exist and occasionally collaborate.

“The PGA Tour is a US-focused tour and they do an incredible job. I would say we’re a global tour,” said ONeil, who previously worked in the NBA & NHL.

“It’s very akin to Formula One and Indy Car. Indy Car is a wonder. I went to the Indianapolis 500 and it’s an incredible experience and event.

On the explosive question of reunification with the PGA Tour, O’Neil’s tone is measured but unambiguous. He says conversations with newly-appointed PGA Tour chief executive Brian Rolapp have only been preliminary and both have been focused on getting their own organisations in place.

“Yes I think we will need to create more playing experiences and opportunities with the PGA Tour,” continued O’Neil.

“I think there’s real opportunity, but I am focused on LIV Golf and taking the sport around the world. I think that we are all smart enough to figure out that we can also create bigger platforms to have some fun and grow this game together.

“I would say that if I were here for three years, I’d be thinking very differently. I think today what I’m looking at is a business with a strong foundation and incredible momentum and happy players, happy caddies and happy families of players.

Five-time major winner and PGA Tour player Rory McIlroy last month criticised LIV Golf’s “irrational spending” on huge player contracts saying that it makes a merger very difficult, and that LIV would have to keep spending to maintain its position.

O’Neil does not want to be drawn into a war of words with LIV’s most outspoken critic.

“Rory has had an extraordinary career and is an extraordinary player,” said O’Neil.

“I’ve met him a couple of times, but I don’t know him so don’t really want to comment. All I will say is I am working every day to create the greatest sports league in the world.

“We have players who are committed and our players commit to a different level of travel.”

When pushed on whether there would be further significant spending on player contracts O’Neil said: “I only have an 11-month view. I wasn’t here when they had to do what they had to do to set LIV up, I wasn’t here when some of the madness in the ecosystem was happening.

“I only know from the first day of January when I showed up, I have hired a business team that I would argue is second to none in terms of commercial acumen. So I like what we do and how we do it.