Golf broadcaster Eamon Lynch has launched a blistering attack on LIV Golf and Greg Norman, claiming they lied to their players over Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) points.
Last year, the Saudi Arabian-backed start-up tour admitted defeat in its attempts to get the OWGR to award players ranking points for playing LIV tournaments. The OWGR consistently claimed LIV’s events did not meet the criteria for points to be awarded, something which was of significant embarrassment for CEO Greg Norman, who was confident they would be able to convince them to do so.
World ranking points play a part of the qualifying criteria needed to play in majors. And speaking on NBC’s Golf Channel in the wake of recent comments made by Eugenio Chacarra about broken promises, Lynch went after LIV and Norman for lying to their players and for attempting to undermine and bully the OWGR.
“It’s evidence that decisions have consequences and Chacarra’s finding out that the decision he made back in the summer of 2022 has consequences, said Lynch in his lengthy attack on LIV.
“He’s going to pay those consequences. The people around him, the people who encouraged him, to make those decisions aren’t actually going to face the consequences. They’ve gotten their percentage, they’re gone at this point. And it was interesting that he echoed what Carlos Ortiz said on the SubPar Podcast in February of last year. He said he too was promised OWGR points for joining LIV. They lied to these guys, it’s an outright lie.
“Because it wasn’t within their gift to give OWGR points. Perhaps Greg Norman thought he could actually bully the world ranking system into giving them points so that he would have a critical mass of players who would allow them to kind of strong arm the world golf rankings to say ‘well you have to give ranking points to a Dustin Johnson or a Brooks Koepka or a Bryson DeChambeau.
“But they didn’t and eventually they said ‘well we’re not going to comply with the criteria so we’re withdrawing the application.
Lynch added: “So they’ve marooned these guys out there on an island and that’s why Eugenio Chacarra finds himself playing in an Asian Tour event in India that’s coming up in a couple of weeks because that’s literally the only place he has status left and he was on a fine trajectory.
“He did make some comments during that interview where he was very envious of Ludwig Oberg, which is kind of ironic because Chacarra making that jump to LIV out of college is what really forced the PGA Tour to get serious about pipelines and elite talent and that’s where Ludwig came out of; the PGA Tour University.

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“And Ludwig is now the number sixth ranked player in the world. He’s a PGA Tour player. He’s been a runner-up at the Masters. He’s been a stud in the Ryder Cup, all of the things Chacarra said that he wants, that those are his goals, well he’s now put himself kind of behind the eight ball in terms of getting to those goals because he finds himself with a great bank balance sure – but he doesn’t really have any status anywhere.
“He’s got an uphill climb ahead of him.”