MENA Tour Commissioner Releases Statement on LIV Partnership, OWGR Points

Statement from David Spencer, Commissioner of the MENA Tour:

We have had various communications with OWGR since submitting our 2022/23 schedule, MENA Tour handbook, exemption criteria and our field ahead of our opening event of our new season which tees off today. None of this communication pointed towards any technical reason for the LIV Golf Invitational Bangkok to be treated any differently to any MENA Tour event, every one of which has received OWGR since we were accepted into the OWGR framework in 2016.

We have followed the OWGR Guidelines for our 2022/23 Season. Recently, there has been much talk in the golf world about limited field tournaments and 54-hole tournaments. For absolute clarity, the OWGR itself defines a limited field tournament as a tournament which has less than 30 qualified players. Furthermore, the MENA Tour has always had the OWGR’s blessing to stage 54-hole tournaments.

The OWGR states: “The primary objective of the Ranking is to maintain, review, update, administer and promote the recognition of a system that fairly ranks the relative performance of golfers participating in the leading men’s professional tournaments throughout the world”. Clearly, the MENA Tour’s first event of the 2022/23 season, the LIV Golf Invitational Bangkok, is one of those tournaments and accordingly should be included in this week’s OWGR events. Not including our event in this week’s OWGR render the results and subsequent player movements inaccurate.

As per the OWGR Guidelines , we will be lodging our field for the LIV Golf Invitational Jeddah prior to the deadline of October 12th.

I also want to wish our 48 MENA Tour Members who are teeing off in Bangkok this morning all the very best for our first tournament of the 2022/23 season and assure all of our Members that we will continue to work tirelessly to resolve this situation with the OWGR.

The MENA Tour’s guiding principle of maximising playing opportunities and pathways for our Members and growing the great game of golf remains unchanged.