Qualifying Crapshoot

Kalle Samooja, Jinchiro Kozuma, and Kieran Vincent earned spots on the LIV Golf circuit this weekend after getting through LIV’s qualifying event in Abu Dhabi. All three players will be drafted onto LIV rosters this winter and have status on the tour for 2024.

Unless you are the biggest golf junkie on the planet (or you’ve written the Fried Egg Golf newsletter for the last five years), I wouldn’t expect you to know those names. You may even be surprised that people you’ve never heard of were able to get through a qualifying event and earn spots in a league doling out millions of dollars. That’s because, like most things LIV related, their qualifying tournament was a complete farce. The event involved four rounds over three days, with scores resetting after each of the first two days. On the final day, the low three players earned spots in the league. It wasn’t so much qualifying as it was multiple sprint races. Oh, and Greg Norman walked with the players in the playoff for the final two spots.

Whether you’re a fan of LIV Golf or not (*raises hand*), the idea of players “qualifying” for a league via this format is ludicrous. Not only does it fail to identify the best players in the field, it places more of an emphasis on short-term drama than the long-term overall strength of LIV’s tour. It’s one thing to use single-round scores for a Monday qualifier for one event, but giving players a year-long contract worth seven figures based on two rounds of golf is laughable.

But LIV has never been about finding equitable solutions. They are far more focused on creating a spectacle than they are creating a healthy professional league. If LIV really wanted a league filled with the best talent possible, they would have created a qualifying event or format that identified players as such. Instead, the event they trotted out was the latest in a series of unserious actions. Feel however you want to about the league, but spare me the notion that they are trying to create a serious product.