Ranking LIV Golfers: How to Determine The Best Player on LIV
Three tournaments is hardly a useful sample size to work from, but if LIV is going to style itself like any other professional golf tour, the fans will probably want to know who’s the best LIV golfer? Or, which LIV golfers are playing the best across the season?
As of now, LIV has no system to measure the best performer on tour—largely in part because it has no playoff system or method to crown a winner.
One easy (ironic) way to measure performance is obviously prize money, but this isn’t always the best way to gauge a player’s season. As a result, we thought we’d try to figure out an easy way to measure LIV performance so far.
Taking the three tournaments on the LIV Tour to this point—London, Portland, and Bedminster—and applying the FedEx Cup points allocated by the PGA to its own event winners provides a decent look at overall LIV performance.
Specifically, the list below uses the points awarded to the top 48 finishers at PGA Tour events. That is, 500 points for first place (Henrik Stenson at Bedminster), 300 points for second place (Matthew Wolff at Bedminster), and so on.
These points were applied to the first three tournaments, and the result is the following ranking system that includes all 61 players who’ve played in LIV events to date.
Top 61 LIV Players to date:
- Branden Grace (750 points)
- Dustin Johnson (575)
- Charl Schwartzel (570)
- Henrik Stenson (500)
- Carlos Ortiz (435)
- Matthew Wolff (385)
- Hennie Du Plessis (341.5)
- Patrick Reed (300)
- Talor Gooch (270)
- Peter Uihlein (245)
- Sam Horsfield (233)
- Louis Oosthuizen (232)
- Justin Harding (207)
- Jinichiro Kozuma (189)
- Lee Westwood (182.5)
- Martin Kaymer (178)
- Sergio Garcia (175)
- Adrian Otaegui (143)
- Matt Jones (135.5)
- Phachara Khongwatmai (125)
- Brooks Koepka (123)
- Turk Pettit (121.5)
- Ian Poulter (121)
- Ryosuke Kinoshita (119)
- Graeme McDowell (116)
- Kevin Na (113.5)
- Chase Koepka (113.5)
- James Piot (110.5)
- Laurie Canter (104)
- Bryson DeChambeau (101.5)
- Oliver Bekker (100)
- Paul Casey (100)
- Richard Bland (99.5)
- Scott Vincent (98)
- Travis Smyth (94)
- Shaun Norris (90)
- Abraham Ancer (86)
- Hudson Swafford (84)
- Sihwan Kim (83)
- Yuki Inamori (82)
- Hideto Tanihara (81)
- Wade Ormsby (72.5)
- Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra (71.5)
- Ian Snyman (65)
- Phil Mickelson (60.5)
- Pablo Larrazabal (60)
- Bernd Wiesberger (58.5)
- Pat Perez (56)
- JC Ritchie (51)
- Jediah Morgan (47)
- Sadom Kaewkanjana (46.5)
- Jason Kokrak (34)
- Charles Howell III (34)
- David Puig (32)
- Blake Windred (30)
- Viraj Madappa (28)
- Kevin Yuan (23.5)
- Itthipat Buranatanyarat (22)
- Ratchanon Chantananuwat (18)
- Oliver Fisher (18)
- Andy Ogletree (9.5)
Next. LIV’s peculiar sue-first strategy is no way to win. dark
LIV might take issue that this system uses the PGA Tour’s points to rank order its players, but until LIV creates a system of its own, this is as good a means as any to track performance as new players continue to join the emergent league.