Multiple major winners Phil Mickelson and Bubba Watson offered a solution for including top LIV Golf members and elite players into major fields if the current ranking system isn’t adjusted.

Simply use the season-long performance list for each league or tour and provide exemptions to the top players.

“We have to come up with a qualifying mechanism that is inclusive, and if the World Golf Ranking isn’t going to be inclusive, then they have to find another way,” Mickelson said. “They’re going to have to find a way to get the best LIV players in their field if they want to have the best field in golf and be really what a major championship is about.”

“Forget World Ranking points,” Watson added. “Just who is the best in your tour and our league and go from there. It’s simple math. Forget World Ranking points about who plays at what tournament, this tournament is better than that tournament — no. Your tour, your league, call it a day and at those places play against each other four times a year.”

Bubba Watson. Ezra Shaw

The two LIV Golf captains — Mickelson with HyFlyers, Watson with RangeGoats — made their comments on Wednesday while preparing for this week’s LIV Golf Singapore presented by Resorts World Sentosa Singapore, the fifth tournament of the 2023 LIV Golf League.

The strength of major fields has been a discussion point due to the reliance on the Official World Golf Ranking for various exemptions. The Masters, for instance, offers invites to players in the top 50 of the OWGR in the previous calendar year, as well as the top 50 the week prior to the Masters. The Open Championship offers spots to top 50 OWGR players; the US Open to top 60.

LIV Golf tournaments currently do not receive OWGR points, despite fields that include 13 major winners, including six-time winner Mickelson and two-time Masters champion Watson. Ripper Captain Cameron Smith joined LIV Golf after winning last year’s 150th Open at St Andrews.

At the Masters earlier this month, 18 LIV Golf players were in the field, with Mickelson and Brooks Koepka tying for second and Patrick Reed tying for fourth. The total number of players could be reduced by half for 2024 based on the current qualification criteria.

For the remaining three majors, 10 LIV golfers have confirmed spots for next month’s PGA Championship, seven for the US Open in June, and 11 for the Open Championship in July.

Mickelson, thanks to his record-setting win at the 2021 PGA Championship at age 50, is one of five LIV golfers who are qualified to play in all four majors this season. The others are Smith, Bryson DeChambeau (as the 2020 US Open winner), Dustin Johnson (as the 2020 Masters winner) and Brooks Koepka (for recent major wins, including the 2019 PGA Championship).

Players exempt for majors this year based on previous OWGR standing and other criteria may fall outside the qualification parameters in upcoming years if the system is not adjusted.

“I think that they need to come to a resolution, or it will become obsolete,” said DeChambeau about the current ranking system. “It’s pretty much obsolete as of right now. But again, if the majors and everything continue to have that as their ranking system, then they are biting it quite heavily.”

“If you’re saying these tournaments are the best in the world, you’ve got to have the best there,” Watson said. “To keep them out or to make them lose World Ranking points is not the right way to go. I’ve said it, and I’m going to say it again – I believe we’ve just got to focus on the tours and our league, and the top players.”

LIV Golf has a season-long individual ranking system that rewards the top 24 players in each regular-season tournament with a weighted number of points based on their result. Through the first four events this season, 4 Aces member Peter Uihlein leads the points race as the only player with top-10 finishes in each tournament. Crushers GC’s Charles Howell III, the winner of the season opener in Mayakoba, is second; last week’s winner in Adelaide, Talor Gooch, ranks third.

Other tours have similar points standings, including the Asian Tour’s Order of Merit, the PGA Tour’s FedExCup, and the DP World Tour’s Race to Dubai.

Mickelson is confident a solution will eventually be reached that will provide the majors with the best fields in golf.

“If you’re one of the majors, if you’re the Masters, you’re not looking at, ‘We should keep these guys out,’” Mickelson said. “You’re saying to yourself: ‘We want to have the best field, we want to have the best players, and these guys added a lot to the tournament this year at the Masters. How do we get them included?’

“If the World Golf Rankings doesn’t find a way to be inclusive, then the majors will just find another way to include LIV because it’s no longer a credible way. So it will all iron itself out for the simple reason that it’s in the best interest of everybody, especially the tournaments, the majors, to have the best players.”