Tyrrell Hatton believes there are enough top class players on the LIV Golf tour that should have a route to play in the four men’s major championships next year.
Despite entering its third season, the Saudi backed tour is still not eligible for official world golf ranking points meaning more and more LIV golfers are going to slip outside the top-50 in the world, putting their major championship participation in doubt for next year unless they already have exemptions or come through qualifying for the US Open and Open.
Hatton, ranked 25th in the world, looks set to cling on to his top-50 ranking before the end of the calendar year but heading into 2025, he hopes golf’s governing bodies can come together to establish a pathway for players on LIV to qualify for the major championships.
“I know that the guys at LIV are trying to figure it all out with the powers that be in golf. I think everyone in the golf world can agree that there’s enough fantastic players on LIV that you would like to see them in the field at majors,” said the Englishman.
“Currently, obviously, they got off the World Ranking system. I think, from a player’s perspective, I hope that something can be worked out where if going into 2025 there’s X amount of spots that LIV receive to play in majors. Just with the quality of the fields that we have, I don’t see how people could argue that those guys wouldn’t be deserving of a spot in those tournaments.”
Earlier in the week Joaquin Niemann called for the top-10 players on the LIV individual rankings to be granted spots in next year’s major championships.
The Chilean was handed special invites to the Masters and PGA Championship this year while he secured his spot at the Open after winning the Australian Open on the DP World Tour last year. He missed out on the US Open.
I believe that it’s going to happen. I feel like they’ve got to pull for the best of the game, and I think that’s the right way to do it, hopefully give us some spots out here on LIV and have the best players in there,” said the Chilean who was once ranked 15th in the world but has slipped to 110.
“But yeah, I feel like there’s also different pathways that I can probably take to get into, but ideally it would be nice for LIV and for the game that they have some spots for us.
“I would say top 10 guys. There’s definitely 10 guys, top 10 guys here that could win majors, and yeah, they can definitely give those 10 spots for us and have more competitive majors.
“It’s frustrating, but at the end, I feel like I’m pulling hard for LIV Golf to improve, and I think that would be one of the ways that the game and LIV would improve.”