Carlos Ortiz received the 2024 LIV Golf Houston occasion in June.
Ken Murray/Icon Sportswire by way of Getty Photographs
LIV professional Carlos Ortiz is within the area for the males’s Olympic golf occasion on the 2024 Olympics in Paris, representing Mexico alongside Abraham Ancer. However each gamers virtually missed out on the chance because of their determination to affix LIV, and resulting from what Ortiz calls “politics” that barred different star LIV golfers from enjoying in Paris.
All of it comes all the way down to world rating factors. Olympic qualification relies on the Official World Golf Rating, with the highest 15 gamers robotically making the sphere (with a most of 4 per nation), and every nation assured two spots for the 2 top-ranked gamers from that nation.
The issue for LIV gamers is that the OWGR doesn’t award rating factors for LIV Golf tournaments. So most LIV gamers have seen their rankings fall drastically, thereby threatening their Olympic qualification probabilities, as was the case with Ortiz and Ancer. Ancer talked about it in his pre-Olympics press convention on Tuesday.
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“I used to be undoubtedly sweating it within the final two months as a result of there was actually not a lot that I might play that match the schedule to get within the World Rating factors,” Ancer defined. “So I simply needed to wait and see if my World Rating — as a result of it was beginning to plummet quick each week. We have been simply beginning to make calculations and see if it was going to carry on or not. I imply, fortunately, it did.”
He continued, “it was undoubtedly an odd feeling however not complaining now. I’m blissful that I’m right here.”
For context, Ancer’s best-ever OWGR rating earlier than becoming a member of LIV was eleventh. Now he’s ranked 357th. Ortiz’s peak rating was forty fourth, and he’s fallen all the way in which all the way down to 272nd. Ortiz received the 2024 Worldwide Sequence Oman occasion in February which earned him some rating factors. However he additionally received the 2024 LIV Golf Houston occasion in June for which he acquired no rating factors.
Of their joint Olympic press convention, Ortiz took up a special angle than Ancer, criticizing the qualification system and the state of the PGA Tour-LIV feud that he argues stored a few of the finest golfers out of the Olympics.
“It’s simply the scenario in golf proper now, it’s unfair. Particularly Olympic Video games, you need to have the very best golfers proper right here, however politics one way or the other handle issues nonetheless,” Ortiz lamented on Tuesday. “I nonetheless really feel there’s golfers that ought to be right here and couldn’t be right here due to what has occurred, . I believe the Olympic Video games undoubtedly ought to be impartial, . They need to haven’t turned away rating gamers accordingly, particularly now that the World Rating factors don’t actually work anymore.”
When requested what he sees as a doable answer, Ortiz was gentle on the small print past sharing the idea that the 2 sides want to search out “frequent floor,” and arguing that the world rating qualification system all through the game, together with on the majors, wants fixing to accommodate LIV gamers.
“The answer can be folks up there to go away their egos on the aspect and discover a frequent floor. I believe there may be undoubtedly frequent floor… and each side have to present one thing as much as discover frequent floor,” Ortiz mentioned. “I imagine each of us ought to be enjoying majors. I believe we performed nice golf this 12 months, and it’s onerous to get in them. I attempted to qualify for the British Open. I simply barely missed. However , there ought to be a approach for us to get in there, an easier approach.”
Ancer, who clarified that he doesn’t “get too concerned in politics,” supplied an attention-grabbing Olympic qualification answer that has potential to work: permit nations to pick gamers themselves.
“I believe it could be nice if the nations can get to choose who they bring about and simply be like, ‘hey, these are the fellows that we imagine have an opportunity to win a medal,’ or ‘that is the fellows that I need to deliver,’” Ancer argued. “Possibly that may be a method to repair it. It’s not going to be straightforward. Not all people goes to be blissful.”
Whereas massive LIV stars like Bryson DeChambeau are lacking from the Olympic area, there are nonetheless a number of different LIV gamers who will compete at Le Golf Nationwide. The lads’s battle for gold begins early Thursday morning.
