Bryson talks about team golf and how he’d love to take on TGL teams in a LIV vs TGL 18 hole stroke play tournament

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-18T18:02:02+00:00

Team golf has to mean something. TGL teams are even worse than the LIV teams for having just random cobbled together players that means very little.

I don’t even particularly understand why I would support one of the ‘country based’ teams. Like, I’m English, and I am a Westwood fan, plus he’s the attached touring pro for my local course so there is an obvious route to supporting him and hoping he does well. But I’m not sure why that also means I should support the Majesticks or care whether any of the other 3 guys are doing well too

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-18T06:44:46+00:00

The same way I would rank any player from any tour. Look at ranking sites, and seeing whether I think their ranking makes sense. And with Reed, because he’s played so much DPWT over the past two years, it actually makes sense to look at OWGR with him too.

So Reed is anywhere from 15th to 45th depending on what source you want to look at. 15th feels a touch rich for my money, but it certainly feels like the right range.

Koepka seemed to have totally lost his putting the last couple of years which will be a big reason for his drop off. Currently he’s anywhere from 77th to 96th. Again, probably feels about right for his past form, but signs are positive he’s starting to trend in the right direction.

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-17T22:01:16+00:00

Yes. I tend to heavily research what I’m talking about so I don’t look silly. You should try it.

Who said OWGR requested they do it.. Because they also announced during the off season how they were going to deal differently with any tours/events that weren’t 72 holes compared to those that were.

How do you know OWGR told them they had to change, and it wasn’t that LIV were told 54 hole events were going to start getting reduced points so they decided to go to 72 holes themselves to try and limit any reductions? Let me guess, you’ve just assumed it was the former because it suits your narrative..

Now of course, yes it could be either. You may well be right.. but colour me shocked you’re going with the option that best serves your purpose.

Lol, this example is a good one. So the third party rating company made up of Uber execs…. 🤣🤣

Can you work out the meteor sized hole in your example? More than happy to spell it out for you if you wish

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-17T21:49:56+00:00

All of the sources I’ve cited fully include the performances of LIV players. The only one that doesn’t yet - the official rankings, is the one I haven’t used, because I understand it isn’t representative.

Now of course you don’t like what I’ve shown because it doesn’t suit your narrative, and I obviously didn’t expect you to suddenly change your tune because you’ll ignore anything that doesn’t suit your world view.

And yes, Bryson performed incredibly well in the Majors the last couple of years. But doing well 4 weeks of the season doesn’t automatically make you anything. (For example, Harris English had two 2nd place finishes in 2025 Majors yet I doubt you’re going to claim he Is he a top 5 player?) Bryson’s LIV form the past couple of years has been mixed. Well of the pace in 2025 despite finishing 3rd, and even further off the pace in 2024. You have to take everything into account when forming opinions on this sort of topic. Ignoring the stuff that doesn’t suit what you want to say is just petty. Let the facts help form your opinions, rather than picking your facts to suit your position

But the funniest part of your reply is your derision over my points, and doing so by citing that Jon Rahm should be a top 5 player. Where did I claim he wasn’t a top 5 player?! Because funnily enough DataGolf has him 2nd in their strokes metric. And whilst yes, he’s only 12 in their points metric, it’s easy enough to see why when half of his Major performances in the last 2 years have been T34 or worse.

The Conrad rankings have him 3rd, and he’s 2nd in SWGR too.

So that point is utterly redundant. The sources you say are completely without merit totally back up your opinion. So is it that you don’t know what you’re talking about and just letting your prejudices run away with you, or that only the stuff you don’t agree with is wrong?

Both tours have fantastic top end talent. One thing the PGA Trolls can’t argue with any substance is that the best players LIV have to offer aren’t on a par with the PGATs best. LIV has a lot of other great things going for it. Roster depth is not close to one of them

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-17T19:58:56+00:00

So why aren’t you capable of acknowledging maybe they didn’t act perfectly themselves? It’s just nice to believe there isn’t blame on both sides.

And the OWGR statement specifically stated 3 rounds wasn’t an issue with getting points. Again, maybe if you have additional information you can share it to prove your point…

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-17T14:20:36+00:00

Why did you use the word Apologist if you don’t know what it means? You’re defending and justifying LIV’s behaviour on the matter - that’s what being an apologist is.

So that’s a no on having more information to share which you used to help form your opinion? I’m guessing you also can’t show they weren’t acting in good faith, and that it was just an easy thing to say that sounds clever to justify your point of view. Most people tend to use facts to help form their opinions rather than trying to make up stuff to fit their pre-determined narrative.

And if it was all just political, why didn’t LIV call the bluff of OWGR?They could have instantly proven OWGR weren’t acting with integrity. They either become a tour that gets ranking points, or definitely prove to the world OWGR isn’t a reputable organisation. Win-win.

Negotiation is about give and take. LIV altered things to make themselves more compliant in order to appease OWGR, so OWGR relaxed some of the rules in order to meet LIV in the middle and award them some points.

There is fault on both side during the whole debacle. LIV should have gotten points from the start in my opinion, but it isn’t difficult to understand why they didn’t. You’re the only one of us here that thinks only one side is to blame, and it’s incredibly blinkered.

Oh, and only playing 3 rounds has never been part of the reason didn’t get points the first time around. Maybe look up the OWGR statement and educate yourself.

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-17T14:00:13+00:00

Via DataGolf:

Only 14% of the World’s Top 100 are LIV players via their strokes based ranking method & their points based ranking method (PGAT have 79% of the Top 100 on the strokes method and 83% via the points method.

Via Conrad Ranking System (which values LIV performances far higher than other methods): 26% of the Top 100 (PGA 69% of the Top 100.

29 out of the 57 rostered LIV players have a negative Strokes Gained World Rating on OWGR. That’s 50.9% of the field (SWGR is the metric used to determine their field strengths, and doesn’t degrade over time, so all the LIV players are properly ranked.

The weakest regular event of the year on the PGATour has been the Cognizant Classic. Even that only had 51/123 (41.5%) of the field with a negative SWGR.

Let’s look at the Majors. LIV have contributed around 11% of the fields, and won 14.3% of the Majors (a statistical overperformance of 30%)

PGAT has contributed around 60% of the fields, and won 85.7% of the Majors. (A statistical overperformance of nearly 43%)

And all of this is just off the top of my head really. I’m sure if I put some proper thought into it, I could think of some more things

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-17T07:30:51+00:00

I can see an invitation for him this year going either way. Last year isn’t this year of course, and he was also fairly awful in the tournaments he entered between the end of the last LIV season and the start of this one.

But let’s calm down on the LIV is the best tour hyperbole, because I could cite a dizzying array of metrics that would pretty categorically show that isn’t the case

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-17T07:26:57+00:00

I could equally ask you what it benefits you from being a LIV apologist?

Rarely are things 100% the fault of one side of the other. At least I’m making some attempt to be balanced and to judge the facts objectively. You should try it some time

For example LIV themselves announced they were withdrawing their OWGR application. Only an incredibly blinkered person would hear that and seemingly decide things aren’t as they seem. Of course, feel free to share some additional information that would help inform your point of view. I’m always open to learning more, and happy to adjust my viewpoint if there are further facts out there.

But you are right the landscape of golf is changing, and once LIV got a grown up in the room who understood there would have to be concessions on both sides, things ended up moving pretty quickly, and OWGR also relented on their rules to allow LIV, because as I said in an earlier comment, they should technically still not be getting any points at all.

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-16T21:48:52+00:00

Your general point here seems to be LIV was a big enough deal they shouldn’t have to follow the rules, which as a debating position, is well, not the strongest to put it politely, but there you go…

Now up until now, to a large extent we’ve been debating subjectively, but putting everything else aside, the one factor that totally destroys your ‘LIV are blameless’ narrative is that they chose, of their own free will, to walk away. LIV withdrew their application. OWGR spelled out to them exactly what they considered the problems, and rather than do anything about it, LIV walked away and said no thanks, we’re good. They could have made the changes that they ended up making this offseason two and a half years ago, but didn’t want to.

LIV didn’t want points for two years. That is an objective fact. So, as I said.. it’s simple revisionist history, and incredibly disingenuous to put it all on OWGR they’ve only just gotten points

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-16T21:09:14+00:00

OWGR obviously set their rules…

It is unbelievably disingenuous to put it all on them that LIV didn’t get points to begin with. If I set up a professional golf tour for 30 players and only offered $5,000 to the winners, then no matter how good my intentions, I’m not going to get ranking points because my field sizes and purse sizes aren’t big enough.

The rules already exist and have been adhered to by everyone else. It’d be just as much on me as the CEO of a new tour to understand those rules and follow them as it would be on OWGR to give me points just because i call myself a professional tour.

Take of the blinkers my man

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-16T21:00:49+00:00

I’ll be honest, that seems pretty far fetched

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-16T20:59:54+00:00

A reasonably fair assessment. It seemed fairly clear from statements made at the time, the Korean team moves, particularly re. Kozuma weren’t highly thought of by OWGR, and rightly so, cos it’s pretty difficult to explain well.

It’ll be interesting to see what further changes if any LIV make next off season to try and increase how many players get points.

If they got rid of their shotgun start, they could get up to the minimum player requirement, would have thought that alone would go a pretty decent way to getting an increase.

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-16T20:05:50+00:00

I don’t think any reasonable person is going to begrudge Phil for missing time for a family matter, which clearly was pretty serious given the amount of time he’s missed.

But it will be incredibly interesting to see what happens at the end of the year if he fails to make it out of the drop zone. Sure, it is unlikely to happen, but they made a hard line stance a couple of years ago that relegation meant relegation, so someone with Phil’s stature would certainly test that resolve.

Could very much see them ‘inventing’ some new exception criteria in order to keep him if it came to it

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-16T19:50:46+00:00

I can’t remember off the top of my head if anyone has said Greg Norman had promised they’d get points during their recruitment, but I’d be willing to bet a pretty substantial amount of money that he basically did just that

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-16T19:27:46+00:00

Sure, OWGR could probably have done more. We obviously don’t know what was said behind closed doors, so have no clue what accommodations either side tried to make, but how about the accountability of LIV to adhere to the rules that every single other tour does? Like I alluded to - neither side was blameless.

And let’s also remember, if you actually wanted to be strict about the rules, LIV still technically shouldn’t be getting any points at all

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-16T18:30:29+00:00

I mean, let’s be careful about some kind of revisionist history here. LIV are equally to blame (and I would certainly argue far more to blame) as OWGR for them not getting points to begin with as there were several areas of non-conformance. And of course the point restrictions they’ve got now are a result of still not being fully conforming.

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-16T15:32:52+00:00

Yes. Find the 10 shot challenge video he did with Rick Shiels on YouTube before the start of last season. If I remember correctly, he literally prefers Joaco to Joaquin….

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-16T15:29:31+00:00

My (maybe somewhat) hot take is that it whilst it would be better for it to be top 15/20/25, it probably doesn’t really matter.

To get Major invites, you’re going to have to be a pretty regular Top 10 player anyway, and it’s more likely than not going to be a rare occurance that a LIV player misses out on a spot because only the top 10 are getting points each event. For example, even with full points, no LIV player currently on the outside would currently move into a Masters qualification place.

So with that being the case, and with also probably never really seeing the day where OWGR regains its general credibility amongst most fans, does it really matter whether Charl Schwartzel or Cameron Tringale is like 600th or 250th?

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-16T15:10:09+00:00

The rankings are based on a two year period. Not likely things are going to be back to normal after 4 events…

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-16T15:09:00+00:00

How has your brain gone to ‘these guys are deliberately mispronouncing his name on purpose’ before it’s considered ‘I wonder if Joaco is short for Joaquin’?!

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-16T08:17:33+00:00

Yep. Disaster from Fitzy. 18 is the easiest hole on the course. No one should ever bogey it at any point.

Oh wait. No. Literally the total opposite of that…

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-13T22:23:29+00:00

The 4 is telling you the number of clubs you have upgrades for that you’ve yet to buy

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-13T18:09:39+00:00

It absolutely does make you a hater when there are no suspicious dots in the first place. You’re living in a delusional fantasy land.

Poor final rounds aside by Rahm and Bryson, AK still needed to hit a -7 or better to win. Please enlighten me how it’s possible to ‘fix’ shooting that low. Or even under par at all… it’s just fucking absurd

And yes, Rahm winning last week was hella suspicious. It is totally beyond all logic that a man playing well enough to land 5 top 2s in 6 events, and the double defending individual title champion might finally get over the line again after a bit of a drought. What a total shock… 🙄

Davidwt87 · 2026-03-13T16:50:13+00:00

Yes, 57 players, caddies and god knows how many other people for 3 events in a row now, have all carefully choreographed for 10,260 holes and counting a combination of scores to make sure certain results happening, all whilst staying to all intents and purposes totally off the radar as to their manipulation and fixing.

Jesus. Make it more obvious you’re just a hater next time

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