It’s fair to say that Brandel Chamblee is one of LIV Golf’s fiercest critics.
Chamblee is a staunch supporter of the PGA Tour, specifically their meritocratic values – the complete opposite to LIV Golf, if you will.
The former PGA Tour player often shares his outspoken views on the Saudi-backed golf league.
Chamblee recently backed Patrick Reed’s PGA Tour return, and he did the same when Brooks Koepka made the same decision.
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Given his steadfast allegiance to the PGA Tour, many golf fans were desperate to hear what he had to say about the OWGR‘s decision to award LIV Golf ranking points.
Chamblee took to his X account and delivered a detailed response to the OWGR’s decision.
Brandel Chamblee’s reaction to LIV Golf obtaining world ranking points
Chamblee has made a living for himself after hanging up his clubs by being provocatively controversial on all topics in the professional golfing world.
However, golf fans saw another side to Chamblee after his response to LIV obtaining world ranking points.
“A lot of buzz surrounding the OWGR’s decision announced today to give LIV Golf, world ranking points,“ Chamblee said.
“While my position on LIV golf is unchanged, I think it was the right thing for the OWGR to do.
Elite players were falling in the rankings for reasons unrelated to performance which undermined the core claim of the “world rankings”.
“The OWGR was drifting away from clearly showing “who is best” and the sense was that it was acting as a gatekeeper rather than an evaluator.
Having said this, in my opinion, the OWGR is still a flawed system of measurement and may have solved a fairness problem but not the truth problem.“
Fair play to Chamblee. He admitted that the OWGR’s decision was the right one, in spite of his obvious disdain for LIV Golf.
Brandel Chamblee has one big criticism of the OWGR
Chamblee believes that Data Golf is a better and more accurate model than the Official World Golf Rankings.
He explained his reasoning behind that opinion on X.
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“Data Golf is a much better way of predicting who is most likely to play the best any given week,“ Chamblee insisted.
“The OWGR rewards disproportionately major championships, has bonus points for multiple wins, rewards finishing position (same WR points for a 15-shot win as win in a 5-way playoff) and participation volume, uses strokes gained to measure a field’s strength but NOT to measure a player’s performance within any given week.
“In ignoring HOW a player played within a given week (poor ball striking propped up by a spike putting week) OWGR measures achievement more than ability.
“The OWGR does not use: Strokes gained Shot level data ( adjusting for distance, lie and context) Course adjusted difficulty Weather normalization Quality of execution So it cannot distinguish between: Sustainable dominance Short term variance Putting spikes Scrambling Golf Whereas Data Golf explicitly models those things.
“The OWGR is excellent at answering who has built the strongest résumé. It is weak at answering who should be favored next week. Including LIV players makes OWGR fairer as a gatekeeper, but not necessarily better as a measurement tool.“
It will be fascinating to see how LIV obtaining OWGR points changes the landscape of the game moving forward.
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