Taking over the Number 1
Spot on the LIV Golf League Tour
By: Gary Van Sickle
This comes as no surprise unless you just arrived from an alternate universe via the space-time continuum but… LIV Golf has a new No. 1.
He is Jon Rahm, the reigning Masters champion and a new addition to the LIV lineup in 2024. Rahm played his fourth LIV Golf event last weekend in Hong Kong and thus qualified for the minimum number of appearances it takes to be included in my proprietary Vans LIV Golf Rankings.
He is Jon Rahm, the reigning Masters champion and a new addition to the LIV lineup in 2024. Rahm played his fourth LIV Golf event last weekend in Hong Kong and thus qualified for the minimum number of appearances it takes to be included in my proprietary Vans LIV Golf Rankings.
The VLGR (as insiders at the Radio Shack Drive-Through Window call the rankings) rates LIV players based only on the results of LIV tournaments and the four major championships. The VLGR works like a baseball pitcher’s won-loss mark. A player’s result is based on how many players he finished ahead of, behind or tied with. Thus, Abraham Ancer’s win in Hong Kong last weekend earned him a 47-0-0 record. Paul Casey and Cameron Smith, who tied for second, went 45-1-1. The players’ results from 2023 and 2024 are added and turned into a Win Percentage (with a tie counting as one half).
Brooks Koepka ranked No. 1 in LIV after this year’s first two events but the arrival of Rahm bumped him to second. While Rahm hasn’t won yet, he’s been in contention in all four tournaments. He finished 3rd, 8th, 5th and 8th in four events and carries an outstanding .889 mark. Koepka remains in second at .736 and newcomer Tyrrell Hatton moved into third at .719, just ahead of Cameron Smith.
You may wonder about Joaquin Niemann, a two-time LIV winner this season. He ranks 22nd at .557. He would rank considerably higher but he missed the cut at the PGA Championship and the Open Championship last year. That pair of 0-84 marks largely negates his two recent wins, which equated to 106-0. Yes, the major championships count nearly double in value in the VLGR, which seems about right.
Some other notables: Phil Mickelson keeps slumping, falling to 45 th . He was 51 st in Mexico and 52nd in Hong Kong… Hudson Swafford, back after being injured last year, is off to a slow start with a .111 mark and three straight finishes outside the top 50… Lee Westwood, who turns 51 next month, is No. 51 in the rankings with only two of his last eight results inside the top 30 and nothing better than 16 th since early 2023… Peter Uihlein dropped 10 spots since the last published ranking, from 5 th to 15 th … So did Marc Leishman, slipping from 17 th to 27 th …Newcomer Anthony Kim remains unranked, having played in only two LIV outings. If he was ranked, he’d be 55 th , DFL (dead last), with a 5-101-0 mark and a .047 win percentage. That’s worse than the New York Mets. Nowhere to go from there but up…
LIV Golf Ranking Win Pct
1 Rahm, Jon 0.889
2 Koepka, Brooks 0.736
3 Hatton, Tyrrell 0.719
4 Smith, Cameron 0.706
5 DeChambeau, Bryson 0.681
6 Tringale, Cameron 0.652
7 Gooch, Talor 0.649
8 Meronk, Adrian 0.637
9 Howell, Charles 0.634
10 Munoz, Sebastian 0.628
11 Johnson, Dustin 0.62
12 Burmester, Dean 0.618
13 Bland, Richard 0.608
14 Reed, Patrick 0.607
15 Uihlein, Peter 0.605
16 Varner, Harold 0.594
17 Na, Kevin 0.573
18 Canter, Laurie 0.572
19 Garcia, Sergio 0.566
20 Stenson, Henrik 0.562
21 Ortiz, Carlos 0.559
22 Niemann, Joaquin 0.557
23 Chacarra, Eugenio 0.549
24 Casey, Paul 0.549
25 Kokrak, Jaason 0.548
26 Pereira, Mito 0.540
27 Leishman, Marc 0.531
28 Steele, Brendan 0.514
29 Horsfield, Sam 0.511
30 Ancer, Abraham 0.507
31 Vincent, Scott 0.504
32 Herbert, Lucas 0.502
33 Puig, David 0.495
34 Suratt, Caleb 0.481
35 Lahiri, Anirban 0.479
36 Perez, Pat 0.471
37 Grace, Branden 0.469
38 Wolff, Matthew 0.467
39 Poulter, Ian 0.463
40 Jones, Matt 0.453
41 Oosthuizen, Louis 0.449
42 McDowell, Graeme 0.415
43 Pieters, Thomas 0.375
44 Watson, Bubba 0.374
45 Mickelson, Phil 0.367
46 Schwarzel, Charl 0.362
47 Lee, Danny 0.342
48 Samooja, Kalle 0.330
49 Ogletree, Andy 0.304
50 Kozuma, Jinichiro 0.297
51 Westwood, Lee 0.285
52 Vincent, Kieran 0.237
53 Kaymer, Martin 0.214
54 Swafford, Hudson 0.111
55 Kim, Anthony* 0.047
*ineligible
Gary Van Sickle has covered golf since 1980, including 129 men’s major championships, 15 Ryder Cups and one sweet roundtrip flight on the late Concorde. His work has appeared in The Milwaukee Journal, Golf World magazine, Sports Illustrated and Golf.com. He is a former president of the Golf Writers Association of America. His email gvansick at aol dot com.
