LIV golfers received huge news Thursday as both The Masters and British Open said there would not be any exemptions to get into their tournaments.
In order to play in the four PGA majors, you must have either won the tournament before or have a high ranking. Although several LIV golfers have either won a major or were ranked as one of the top golfers in the world, since joining LIV Golf, they have either fallen in the rankings or fallen out of the rankings, and according to officials for both tournaments, they aren’t changing their policies anytime soon.
Naturally, LIV golfers such as Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau think the ruling is unfair and thinks it should change. They think these tournaments should make exemptions for the best golfers in the world, even if they do play for LIV Golf.
“The majors need to protect their product,” Mickelson said, “and there’s probably other ways that they can do that [apart from OWGR points] by creating slots.
DeChambeau echoed Mickelson sentiments.
“We would love to find another way to be integrated into the major championship system,” DeChambeau, one of just six LIV golfers eligible for next year’s PGA Championship and U.S. Open, said of the OWGR’s denial, “since I think we have some of the best players in the world.”
Chairman of Augusta National Fred Ridley says although they respect the players’ rights to do what they want in their careers, but the rules are still the rules, at least for now.
“They made decisions based on what they thought was in the best interests of their golf careers, and we certainly respect that,” Ridley said. “In our invitation criteria, it does say that we reserve the right to issue special exemptions to international players, although we did issue a special exemption to an amateur, the NCAA champion, last year. So we’re always looking at that, but these decisions have been made, and we’ll have to do what’s in the best interests of the Masters, and we’ll continue to do that.”