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A strong critic of LIV Golf, Brandel Chamblee has often disapproved of the Saudi-based promotion. The Golf Channel analyst even called out the PGA Tour for trying to imitate its rivals by reducing the field size in 2026. Such is his disdain towards LIV Golf. Yet, even Chamblee couldn’t help but show support for the PIF-funded league as it pointed out the “bizarre” approach of the OWGR.

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Joining the 5 Clubs podcast, Chamblee told Gary Williams, “By not giving LIV points, they were policing format differences, incentivizing participation, protecting legacy Tours, and they were doing that using a tool that was meant to measure performance.”

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The OWGR system was built to measure the performance of the players. However, Chamblee believes that Trevor Immelman & Co. used it to force their perception of professional golf onto LIV Golf. Scott O’Neil and his team weren’t able to access the world ranking points until they modified their format to suit the OWGR management’s idea of the sport.

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Chamblee also added, “I think the official world golf rankings are flawed. They give perceived prestige by elevated points to major championships and to The PLAYERS Championship. And they give bonus win points.”

Taking Scottie Scheffler as an example, the World No. 1 has earned two extra points from OWGR in the last 104 weeks. That’s because in the last couple of years, he has won 14 events. Scheffler got four bonus points for every title he secured in the 104-week window. That means he earned 56 more points than he should have. That helped him jump up to 17.0167 in two years.

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That’s not the only issue Chamblee had with the OWGR. He also stated, “It uses strokes gained data to measure the strength of a field. But it doesn’t use strokes gained data to measure the performance within a week.”

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The CBS analyst explained how winning a tournament by a big margin and in the playoffs rewards you with the same OWGR points. However, someone who has won a PGA Tour event by 4 strokes or more is likely to perform better in the following week than someone who scraped through the playoffs against his peers. Chamblee found that to be absolutely “bizarre.”

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Interestingly, Chamblee was also the one to defend the OWGR when the rules for LIV Golf ranking points were first released.

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Brandel Chamblee’s initial opinion about LIV Golf receiving world ranking points

Brandel Chamblee does believe that the OWGR delayed rewarding LIV Golf world ranking points. However, that doesn’t mean he believes that they weren’t treated poorly by Trevor Immelman & Co.

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The popular golf analyst tweeted, “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.”

However, he did state that the system was flawed as he wrote, “In my opinion, the OWGR is still a flawed system of measurement and may have solved a fairness problem but not the truth problem.”

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It’s evident that his opinion about LIV Golf as a league hasn’t changed. However, he still sympathized with the likes of Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm missing out on OWGR points. That said, Chamblee’s opinion about the OWGR still seems to be consistent. He believes that the system set by Immelman & Co. is flawed and needs to be fixed.

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Molin Sheth

1,999 Articles

Molin Sheth is a senior Golf writer at EssentiallySports and a key member of the ES Golf Trends Desk. He brings strong editorial judgment and a data-driven approach to uncovering the game’s overlooked angles, delivering insightful play-by-play reporting across golf’s four major championships. As part of the EssentiallySports Journalistic Excellence Program, an in-house initiative that mentors and develops writers through expert guidance and rigorous training, Molin works closely with industry-leading mentors to bring clarity and depth to a sport where precision matters and every shot tells a story.

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